Arthur Goes Fourth VIII: Of Moose and Spacemen
by Dead Composer
Summary: The fate of Earth rests on the antlers of one boy...
1. George Answers the Call

This fic is rated PG for violence.  
  
Disclaimer: I don't own Arthur, but I've written so much about him, I probably should.  
  
----  
  
AGF VIII is the final installment of the Arthur Goes Fourth series. If I continue the series after this, it will be about Arthur and his friends in fifth grade, and I will call it Arthur Goes Fifth, or Arthur Pleads the Fifth, or Arthur's Fifth Symphony, or something equally silly.  
  
If you're new to the AGF series and don't want to read it from the beginning, here's some background so you won't get lost (SPOILERS!).  
  
- AGF VIII starts where AGF VII left off, at the beginning of April.  
  
- Buster and his parents, Bitzi and Harry, moved to Chicago in AGF II. They flew to Elwood City for a vacation in AGF VII, and are still there.  
  
- There are four new kids in Arthur's fourth-grade class, which is taught by Bud Wald. Beatrice "Beat" Simon is a brainy half-rabbit, half-aardvark girl from England. Van Cooper is a wheelchair-bound duck boy who comes from a family of six children. Mavis Cutler is a hamster girl of above-average intelligence who formerly attended Uppity Downs Academy. Adil Faruk is an exchange student from Turkey (you may remember him from the episode "Dear Adil").  
  
- Alan (Brain) advanced to fifth grade and is now in Prunella's class. They are taught by the recently hired, rather annoying Mrs. Krantz.  
  
- Sue Ellen and her parents moved away in AGF V/VI. Ostensibly it was due to Mr. Armstrong's emergency diplomatic assignment to the war-torn republic of Karjakistan, but it likely had more to do with the fact that he is secretly a CIA agent. Oops...did I say that out loud?  
  
- As a result of an experiment by the late inventor Andrew Putnam, Francine now has a copy of Sue Ellen's memories and personality in her brain. This has led her to fall in love with Arthur, but he does not return her feelings.  
  
- Three characters introduced in AGF VII will play a role in AGF VIII--Dudley Proctor, Augusta Winslow, and April Murphy. Dudley was once known as Dolly Proctor, a 17th-century witch girl who was transported through time to the present day. Augusta was formerly known as Angus Winslow, an alchemist (and high-school friend of Dave Read) who tried to exploit Dolly's powers to realize his vision of a perfect world. His efforts backfired, however, unleashing a force of evil that was only stopped by a desperate stratagem on the part of Prunella--but not before Dolly and Winslow became magically gender-switched. While Dudley (Dolly) struggled with the loss of his girlhood, Augusta (Angus) embraced the change and the magical powers that came with it. Which brings us to April, who is actually the twelve-year-old Sue Ellen. Two years in the future she will fake her death from AIDS and assume a new identity, and her parents will be murdered by enemy spies shortly thereafter. Heartbroken, April will seek out Augusta and become her acolyte, using the alchemist-witch's magical inventions to travel into the past in hopes of preventing her parents' deaths--by assisting the present-day Augusta in her newest scheme to eliminate all evil from the world. What is that scheme, you ask? Read on...  
  
----  
  
It was April Fools' Day, and many comic strip artists had agreed to observe the holiday by drawing each other's strips. Buster chortled with glee as he read Cathy drawn by Scott Adams and Dilbert drawn by Cathy Guisewite. His parents, Bitzi and Harry Mills, sat on either side of him, waiting for the arrival of the jetliner that would carry them from Elwood City to their home in Chicago.  
  
"Mom, look at this," said the rabbit boy, thrusting the comics page in front of his mother's bespectacled face. "Cathy has a nose, but she doesn't have a mouth."  
  
"That's very funny, dear," Bitzi replied. In her lap was laid the front section of the newspaper, whose headline read, CRIME RETURNS TO ELWOOD AFTER 10-DAY ABSENCE.  
  
Harry sighed wistfully. "Coming back here reminded me of how much I love this place," he remarked. "If the new job weren't so essential to my career, I'd move back in an instant."  
  
"I like it better here, too," Buster added.  
  
Harry grinned and playfully rubbed his stepson's scalp with his knuckles. "What was your favorite part of the vacation?" he asked.  
  
It didn't take Buster long to decide. "Being turned into a half-boy, half-girl two-headed monster with Fern."  
  
As he laughed along with his parents, a voice came over the speaker system: "United flight 562 from Philadelphia is now disembarking at gate C-12."  
  
Buster glanced idly across the terminal, where gates C-11 and C-12 were located. An old lady, a woman with two toddlers, and a fat bald man were seated in chairs, expecting a flight to Newark. He watched with amused interest as the toddlers, both boys, waddled about and played with their Bunny League plush toys.  
  
A minute later the door of gate C-12 opened, and passengers began to stream out. Among the first were a pair of long-haired hippies, a man and a woman, who looked around the terminal with intrigued smiles.  
  
"This is it, man," said the male hippie. "The real city of brotherly love."  
  
"But nobody's smiling at us," observed the female hippie. "I thought everybody here was supposed to, like, smile and wave as we go by."  
  
"#$% hippies," Buster heard his mother grumble.  
  
Then Buster saw something very, very odd. His eyes went wide.  
  
Emerging from the gate door between two teenage blond girls was a man with a strange head. Scaly, green, hairless skin, a bulging forehead, glowing red dots for eyes, a swaying tentacle for a nose. It was the weirdest alien mask Buster had ever seen in his nine-year life. He gaped in wonder.  
  
"Mom! Dad!" he blurted out, pointing at the man. "Look at that guy!"  
  
"Don't point," said Harry, pushing the boy's arm down. "It's impolite."  
  
The masked man wore a navy blue business suit and well-shined black shoes, and gripped a brown leather briefcase in one of his hands, which Buster noticed were also green and scaly.  
  
"He must be an actor in a space movie, or something," Buster marveled.  
  
"Who?" asked Bitzi.  
  
"The guy with the mask," answered Buster, pointing again.  
  
"I don't see a guy with a mask," said Bitzi, adjusting her glasses.  
  
Buster couldn't take his eyes off the man, who was starting to walk away from the gate, swinging his briefcase.  
  
"I want a mask like that, Dad," Buster pleaded. "I want to wear it for Halloween."  
  
"A mask like what?" asked Harry quizzically.  
  
The green alien man passed under the sign directing him to the baggage claim area. Buster wondered why his parents didn't notice his bizarre visage, which was in plain view. Indeed, none of the other passengers in the terminal seemed to pay any heed to the costumed man.  
  
Then a thought occurred to him...  
  
Leaping from his chair, he quickly uttered, "I'll be right back," and started to walk hastily after the mysterious man.  
  
"Buster, where are you going?" Bitzi called after him.  
  
Glancing over his shoulder, Buster noticed that his mother had left her seat and was pursuing him anxiously...but he would not be deterred. He acknowledged that it might be an elaborate April Fools prank, that he might never live down the embarrassment of falling victim to it. On the other hand, if his parents and the other passengers were truly blind to what he clearly saw, then it could mean only one thing. Aliens in human form...the vanguard of an invasion of Elwood City...  
  
The green man was strolling past the Cinnabon outlet when Buster approached him from behind. Just as Bitzi laid a stern hand on his shoulder to stop him, he glimpsed a name embossed in gold letters on the edge of the man's briefcase.  
  
Dr. Portinari.  
  
----  
  
The first thing Mrs. Nordgren noticed when her son George returned from school was a pink hair ribbon tied around the end of his left antler.  
  
"Hi, Mom," he said as his mother began to snicker. "What are you laughing at?"  
  
She covered her grinning lips with one hand, and pointed at his antler with the other. George reached up, felt the ribbon, pulled it off, and cried out in horror.  
  
Mrs. Nordgren giggled uncontrollably as she tried to resume her ironing.  
  
"One of the girls must've snuck this on me," George grumbled, tossing the hair ribbon into the garbage basket. "This is what I get for not having nerve endings in my antlers."  
  
"You have to admit, it was clever," said his mother.  
  
"Not as clever as the stunt Beat, Van, and Binky pulled," answered George, now smiling. "They all drank a gallon of carrot juice yesterday, then they came to school with orange skin, and told everybody it was a virus."  
  
"That was a good one," said Mrs. Nordgren.  
  
"Yeah, I ran halfway home before I realized it was a trick."  
  
As George pulled off his backpack, the telephone rang and he picked it up. "Hello?"  
  
"George, it's Buster."  
  
The moose boy's face lit up. "Hey, Buster. Did you have a good trip?"  
  
"Never mind the trip," came his friend's worried voice. "I called you because you're the only one who'll believe me. There's a space alien in Elwood City."  
  
George's jaw plummeted.  
  
"He flew in from Philadelphia," Buster went on. "I guess he looked human to everybody else, but to me he was all green skin and scales. His nose was like an octopus arm. He had a briefcase, and the name on it was Dr. Portinari."  
  
George could only stammer in response. "A-a-are you s-sure...?"  
  
"He's gotta be an alien," Buster continued. "I've never heard of an Earth person with a name like that. Portinari. It rhymes with Alpha Centauri. And the doctor part means he's some kind of scientist. I'll bet he was exiled from his own planet, and he's come to Earth to carry on his diabolical experiments."  
  
Terror filled George's frozen pupils.  
  
"George?" came Buster's voice. "Are you there?"  
  
The moose boy clenched his free fist and summoned up courage.  
  
"Yes, I'm here," he said in a confident tone. "I'll always be here. The future of Earth is in the safest of hands!"  
  
TBC 


	2. Augusta Moves In

As George and Buster discussed the alien situation, Muffy Crosswire wandered along the street in the direction of her mansion, looking rather dejected. Her hair, which had grown an inch since she had bobbed it while on the run with Angela, was coiffed instead of braided. In her hands she clutched the math test that had been returned to her at school, and she occasionally glanced at it. D minus. It drained the warmth from her heart, as if she were looking at an amputated stump that had once been her hand. 

As she passed by the side street leading to Francine's apartment building, she noticed an interesting development. In front of Westboro Apartments sat a moving truck (Tolon Movers, naturally), and two uniformed duck men were engaged in carting a large wooden desk from the truck's cargo bay to the building's entrance.

_Hmm_, thought Muffy. _Francine's getting a new neighbor._

Drawn by curiosity, she hurried down the sidewalk toward the moving truck. When she arrived, one of the men waved a feathery hand at her. "Hi there."

"Hello," said Muffy flatly. Not wanting to flaunt her poor grades to the movers, she quickly folded up the math test and stuffed it into her pocket.

"Tisk, tisk, Muffy," she heard a female voice taunt. "D minus. Surely you can do better."

Turning, Muffy saw a blond rabbit woman standing next to the building entrance, wearing a chartreuse blouse and short skirt. She immediately recognized both the woman and her clothing--the recently befriended Augusta Winslow, and the blouse-skirt combo that Muffy had helped her to select at the mall.

"A-Augusta?" stammered Muffy with astonished delight. "Y-you're moving here?"

"Yes," Augusta replied, signaling for her to enter. "Come in and have a look at my new pad."

Muffy followed her into the building, eager to hear about the welfare of her new friend who had endured such drastic changes in her life. "I thought you were going back to Salem," she asked Augusta while accompanying her up the stairway.

"I changed my mind." The rabbit woman was wearing a pair of size-nine sneakers that she had chosen on her own--quite a drop from the size fourteens she had sported in her previous body. "I like Elwood. Less crime, less traffic, friendlier people."

"But what will you do?" asked Muffy earnestly. "I mean, for work."

"I haven't decided," said Augusta as she started to rip open one of the boxes that had been laid next to the door of her new apartment. "My museum blew up, so I can't do that anymore." She pulled from the opened box a plastic container filled with a powdered blue substance. "With my new powers I could be a stage magician, but I don't want to attract too much attention to the fact that I'm the last surviving Wicasta. So I'll find some menial day job, and everybody will think I'm just one of the girls."

A thought sprang up in Muffy's brain. "Real estate," she suggested to Augusta, who was resting the container on a wall shelf. "Everyone's talking about moving to Elwood City, what with the ten crime-free days and all. You could sell houses and make a killing."

"Real estate," Augusta mused. "Hmm...that would require me to wear makeup." Her expression appeared slightly pained.

Muffy noted this, and it concerned her. "You...you aren't happy about being a woman, are you?" she asked with trepidation.

Augusta's face became more pained. "How can I explain this to you?" she said with a hint of irritation. "You see, there's this thing that women go through, and I hoped I would have a month to prepare for it, but..."

To her relief, Muffy fell silent and gazed at her with something resembling understanding and compassion.

But only for a second. "You know what you need?" the girl spoke up. "You need to get your ears pierced. I think you'd look great with a pair of star earrings."

"Listen, Muffy," said Augusta sharply. "You're a little girl. If you turned into a little boy like Dolly did, you'd hardly feel a difference. That's not how it is when you're grown up."

It soon became evident to her that whenever Muffy stopped talking, it was out of confusion rather than sympathy.

"It doesn't hurt at all," Muffy babbled. "You walk in, you get pierced, you walk out. It's easy for you because you're an adult. I had to beg my mom for weeks to let me..."

"Oh, shut up," growled Augusta, waving her hand at Muffy's face.

Muffy stood still, her mouth hanging open stupidly, consternated by her sudden inability to will herself to speak.

Augusta sighed with elation and went to retrieve another container from the opened box. As she did so, a twelve-year-old, red-haired cat girl stepped into the apartment, wearing a green dress and a broad smile. Muffy was startled beyond belief at her appearance, but could force no sound to come out of her gaping mouth.

"Muffy!" exclaimed the girl with delight, then caught herself. "Uh, I mean, you must be Muffy Crosswire, the rich girl Quinn hates so much. Nice to meet you. I'm April Murphy."

The cat girl extended her hand to Muffy, who was thoroughly convinced that she had leaped forward in time and come face to face with a future version of her departed friend, Sue Ellen.

With another wave of her hand, Augusta lifted the curse of speechlessness from Muffy. "Omigosh," the monkey girl blurted out. "I...I heard so much about you, but...I had no idea...you look exactly like her..."

April nodded knowingly. "They all say that. Who knows? Maybe I'm a clone of her, or she's a clone of me."

With a bit of hesitation, Muffy took the older girl's hand and shook it. "Where do you live?" she inquired.

"I'm staying with Augusta for the time being." April started to pull open one of the cardboard boxes as the duck movers arrived in the hallway with the desk.

As Muffy backed against a wall to make room for the movers, she asked April, "Where are your parents?"

April showed no emotion as she lifted a container of dried herbs from the box and replied, "They're dead."

Muffy lowered her head out of respect. "I'm sorry to hear that. So you're an orphan."

"Yes," said April, carrying the container to a shelf, "but I know how to take care of myself. I don't belong in a foster home or an orphanage."

At a loss for words, Muffy reached into her pocket and ran her fingers over the folded math test. "Uh, I guess I should go now," she said wearily. "I have a lot of studying to do."

"What are you studying?" asked April with the casual glibness of a longtime friend.

"Everything," answered Muffy, inching toward the door. "Whatever I can get my hands on. The flowers are in bloom, but the only thing I'll get to smell this month is dried ink on the pages of a book. I'll see you two later."

"I'm sure you'll pass fourth grade," Augusta reassured her.

Wondering how the alchemist-turned-witch knew so much about her scholastic difficulties, Muffy started toward the door...and almost ran into Francine.

"Hi, Muffy. I saw you..." Francine stopped in mid-sentence, alarmed to see April bent over one of the boxes. "Sue Ellen, you're...uh, hi, April. I wondered if I'd ever see you again."

April glared darkly at her and motioned toward the opened bedroom door. Francine anxiously followed her into the room, where the movers had assembled the bed frame, and closed the door after them.

She easily interpreted April's scolding expression. "I'm sorry," she said contritely. "It slipped out. I thought you'd left forever."

"Don't ever call me by that name again," said April slowly but firmly.

Francine meekly lowered her face. "Okay, April."

The cat girl's expression softened slightly.

"Last time we talked, you said something important was about to happen," Francine ventured to ask. "Did it happen?"

"No more questions about the future," April barked softly.

Francine's head sank even lower. Then April smiled warmly.

"Come here, you." She threw her arms around Francine and pulled the girl closer.

----

Fern was sitting in front of her computer when the doorbell rang. Quickly deleting an email from Greta von Horstein recounting her efforts to overturn the ban on her future visits to Elwood City, the poodle girl bounded to the door and peered through the peephole. A welcome pair of antlers greeted her eyes.

"Hi, George."

"Can I use your computer, Fern?" requested the moose boy as he stepped through the doorway. "I need to do a web search."

"Go ahead." Fern gestured toward the computer desk. "I'll watch TV."

"Thanks," said George. "I can't do web searches on my computer. My parents only let Salma and me go to silly baby sites like George seated himself and opened a search engine window, Fern planted herself on the couch and started to experiment with the remote. "News... junk...reality...junk...cartoons...junk...ooh, Pride and Prejudice!"

Hearing grunts of frustration, she looked away from the Jane Austen drama unfolding on the large screen. "What are you looking for, George?"

The boy swiveled and scowled. "There's this doctor in Philadelphia called Dr. Portinari, and I'm trying to find information about him."

"Sounds Italian," Fern mused. "What kind of doctor is he?"

"He's a...a..." George finally blurted out the first medical specialization that popped into his head. "A gynecologist."

Fern's ears perked up with interest. "A gynecologist...hmm..."

"Yeah, you know," George responded. "A doctor who treats guys."

A half minute passed, and George was still at a dead end. Fern, meanwhile, jumped from the couch and hurried to the garage, where her father was lying underneath the family car, fastening a bolt with a crescent wrench.

"Dad," she called quietly. Mr. Walters rolled into the open, his head and floppy ears stained with engine grease.

Fern glanced about warily before sharing her newly obtained secret.

"George's mom is having a baby."

TBC


	3. Nadine Returns

"The profit motive is what made this nation great," trumpeted Ed Crosswire. "It's what made us Crosswires what we are today. Only a fool sells things for what they're worth. No one can make a living that way." 

It sounded like a discourse on economic theory, but it was delivered in the dining room of the Crosswire mansion by an exhausted, slightly pale man in a green shirt and tie. Muffy had heard similar speeches many times before, and so had her mother. Only baby Tyson, who was giggling and taking clumsy steps on the thick brown carpet, didn't appear bored.

"Our inventory was virtually wiped out last week," Mr. Crosswire went on. "We received a hundred new cars over the weekend, but we haven't sold a single one. Everybody comes to the lot expecting to see the same low, low prices that they saw when I was under the influence of...whatever influence it was that made me so generous."

"We've been through worse times," replied Mrs. Crosswire nonchalantly.

"No, Millicent, we haven't," her husband retorted. "After the events of the past two weeks, keeping Crosswire Motors afloat will be a challenge. We will all have to tighten our belts and make do with less."

Muffy frowned. "I guess this isn't a good time to ask why you haven't hired me a new chauffeur yet."

Mr. Crosswire narrowed his eyes at her. "Because I may have to let go of_my_ chauffeur before this is over," he answered grimly.

Her father's words faded into oblivion as Muffy lost herself in thought. Did she really want a new chauffeur? None of her friends commuted to school in a limousine. There were times when she wanted to throw it all away, to live an unremarkable life of relative poverty, and there was one particular time when she had done so, and had been punished for it. Nothing would change--she would always be a poor little rich girl, as sure as her last name was Crosswire. For three generations the name had stood for industry, success, and money, money, money, and her father was determined to not be the weak link in the chain. The family's used car empire would remain solvent, whatever the cost.

"The communists are behind it," Mr. Crosswire ranted. "They used some sort of mind control weapon on the city and made everyone honest and kind-hearted."

She wanted to stick her nose in a book. Her friends used the same books she did--as long as she was studying, she was no different from them. But she couldn't leave the table until her father's long-winded tirade concluded.

"They want to sap and impurify our precious bodily fluids," he went on.

----

The inanity of Mary Moo Cow didn't compare to that of The Giggles, a new children's show from Australia--at least that was Arthur's assessment. Maybe it was the fact that the stars were four grown men who didn't wear costumes and ended every other sentence with "mate". Maybe it was that ridiculous pirate, Captain Wifflebat.

"Ahoy, mates!" bellowed the captain, a scruffy man who wore an eyepatch and an animatronic parrot on his shoulder. "All aboard me friendly pirate ship!"

As he watched the dozens of brightly dressed kids follow the grinning pirate, Arthur shook his head in disgust. "This is a baby show," he grumbled.

D.W., who sat on the couch to his right, nodded in agreement. "Yeah, it is."

Arthur smiled at her. "If you think it's a baby show, then it really must be a baby show."

On D.W.'s right was seated Baby Kate, who giggled and clapped her hands as she thrilled to the bouncy songs.

"As soon as Kate can talk," D.W. speculated, "she'll ask Mom to buy her the CD. Then she'll play it over and over again, and drive me crazy."

She and Arthur exchanged knowing glances.

D.W. rested her chin in her hands. "I'm turning into my brother," she lamented.

As they stared blankly at the TV screen, the doorbell rang, and their parents answered it. D.W. glanced into the kitchen...and saw a face she hadn't seen for two weeks.

"Nadine!" D.W. couldn't leap out of the couch quickly enough. As she hurried to greet her young squirrel friend, Arthur shut off the TV, grabbed Kate in his arms, and followed after.

"D.W., I haven't seen you for such a long time," Nadine gushed. "We had to get out of Salem because Mr. Winslow said a witch was after us, and then I stayed at aunt Judy's house in Nashua."

"I'm so glad you're safe," exulted D.W., hugging the once-imaginary, now-real girl.

Accompanying Nadine were her mother, Maria Harris, and a new Elwood City resident, Augusta Winslow--setting the stage for a bizarre reunion.

"Hello, Dave," Augusta greeted Mr. Read. "You've gotten taller."

Arthur had wondered for days how his father would react...

"Er, I don't think I know you," said Mr. Read, extending his hand to what appeared to be a strange rabbit woman.

"Uh, Dad," the disappointed Arthur spoke up, "that's Gus Winslow."

His father shot him an incredulous stare.

"I was there," Arthur continued. "I saw him change."

From that moment on, Arthur's parents essentially ignored him and absorbed themselves in friendly conversation with the visitors. _Maybe they'll believe me when it's not April Fools Day anymore,_ he thought.

Placing Kate in her high chair, Arthur leaned against a wall, stuck his hands in his pockets, and listened to the chitchat between his parents and the two ladies. Finding it dreadfully dull, he wandered past Nadine, who was showing D.W. some postcards her aunt Judy had given her, and pushed open the front door.

Strolling idly along the sidewalk, he thought about the many unusual things that had happened to him during the school year--meeting a telepathic dog, standing before the Unicorn Council, watching an invisible presence attack George in the classroom, losing Sue Ellen, hearing Francine confess her love for him, being kissed by two girls at once, being turned into a cat, being knocked flat on his back by a kid on a runaway bicycle...

He didn't notice the scream of terror soon enough. When he looked up from his shoes, he saw a rat boy on a yellow bicycle hurtling toward him, unable to stop in time.

The impact knocked the breath from his lungs. Dazed, he fumbled about for his lost glasses, then found them and placed them over his eyes. Uninjured, he pushed himself to his feet and brushed the dust from his shirt. The next thing he saw was Alan, rolling up to him on a bike similar to the other boy's. "You okay, Arthur?" the bear boy asked.

"Uh, I think so," answered Arthur, taking off his spectacles to examine the lenses for cracks.

"I'm so terribly sorry, Arthur," came a voice from behind him, inflected with a colonial accent. Turning, he saw the boy who had once been a 17th-century girl, who went by the name of Dudley Proctor.

"At least you've learned how to go in a straight line," Alan quipped.

Dudley pushed his yellow bike up to Arthur's side. "Alan is being kind enough to teach me how to ride a bicycle," he explained. "It's not going well, as you can see."

"It takes practice," said Arthur glibly.

"Yes, practice," Dudley repeated. "Once I have knocked down every child in the city, I shall be an expert."

"Where do you live now, Doll...er, Dudley?" Arthur inquired.

Alan fielded the question. "My mom's filling out all the forms so she can take him in as a foster child."

"And I shall be a splendid foster child indeed," Dudley boasted.

Alan positioned his bicycle on the opposite side of Arthur. "Let's try it again," he instructed Dudley, "only this time, remember to use the brakes."

Before Alan and Dudley could mount their bikes, two more children approached them--George and his seven-year-old sister, Salma. The moose girl had wavy brown hair with red ribbons, and she wore an attractive red silk dress that reached her ankles.

"What's up, guys?" George hailed them. "Going on a bike ride?"

Alan and Dudley lowered the kickstands on their bicycles. "I'm giving Dudley lessons," Alan replied. "What about you?"

"I'm taking Sal to the library," George answered. "She wants to see the snake exhibit."

Salma grinned, flashing a pair of buck teeth. "Mom bought me a new dress," she informed the boys. "How do you like it?"

"It's nice," said Arthur and Alan in facile unison.

"It's...exquisite." Dudley, seemingly transfixed by the red dress, spoke in a reverential tone. "May I...may I touch it?"

"Go ahead." Salma held up a pleat so that Dudley could run his fingers over it.

"So soft," the rat boy muttered wistfully. "So luxurious. It must have cost a king's ransom."

"A what?" asked the befuddled Salma.

"A lot of money," Dudley clarified.

Salma giggled. "Not really. What's your name?"

"It's Dudley." The tone of his voice hinted that he despised the sound of his chosen name.

"My name's Salma Nordgren," the moose girl told him. "Everybody calls me Sal."

Dudley reluctantly let go of Sal's skirt. "It's a beautiful dress," he commented. "You're a beautiful girl."

Sal lowered her head bashfully and made doe-eyes at the boy. "Thanks."

George chimed in with a question. "Have any of you heard of someone called Dr. Portinari, from Philadelphia?"

Arthur, Dudley, and Alan traded blank looks.

"Okay. Come on, Sal," George urged his sister, and she followed him toward the library, looking over her shoulder at Dudley on occasion.

The rat boy watched the pair fade away, and sighed. "Oh, to be a girl again," he moaned, "and have a dress like hers."

Alan put a hand on Dudley's shoulder, trying to ease his sorrow. "I know this is tough for you," he said gently. "But you're a boy now. If you wear a dress, everyone will think you're gay."

"I would be gay," replied Dudley, "if I were a girl, and had that dress. I would be the gayest girl in all creation."

Arthur and Alan stared at each other, as if trying to mentally decide which of them should inform Dudley of the manner in which certain words had changed in meaning over the centuries.

But before they could decide, they burst into uncontrollable laughter.

TBC


	4. Sal Flirts

"It certainly looks like something I would invent," Augusta remarked. She was examining the design of the time reverser, a gadget created by her future self that had enabled April Murphy to journey three years into the past. A beige rectangular box that fit in the palm of her hand, it featured six dials-- seconds, minutes, hours, days, years, centuries--and an activation button.  
  
"You were very proud of it," said April, who sat in the desk chair. "It was your greatest accomplishment. Going into the future is so easy, you didn't bother to make it an option." She shrugged. "I wouldn't want to go back to a future where my parents are dead anyway."  
  
Augusta positioned herself at the center of the living room of her apartment, and started to manipulate the reverser's controls. "Five seconds into the past," she muttered. "That should make for a convincing demonstration."  
  
As she braced herself to press the button, a sudden flash of light stunned her. She was staring at the backside of a blond rabbit woman, dressed in the same blouse and skirt that she herself was wearing. The woman turned around, revealing a face identical to her own, except for a satisfied smirk.  
  
"Are you...me?" inquired the astonished Augusta.  
  
"Stop talking to yourself and push the button," ordered the other woman.  
  
Augusta did so, and promptly vanished.  
  
The second Augusta looked at April, who seemed bored with the proceedings.  
  
"The first time I did that," said the cat girl, "I was tempted to not push the button. Then there would've been two of me."  
  
"I wonder how that would work," mused Augusta, idly tossing the time gadget into the air and catching it. "If I made copies of myself, I wouldn't have to bother with birthing little Wicastas. But would the copies be viable?"  
  
"Your future self asked the same question," April told her. "She finally decided not to try it, because of the baby."  
  
Seating herself on the edge of the desk next to April, Augusta laid the time reverser in one of the compartments, next to the black case containing the Los Cactos crystal and the sapphire-hued invisibility stone that April had used to steal the crystal from the laboratory.  
  
"I'm not certain the crystal will be of any use to us," said Augusta disappointedly.  
  
April gaped at her. "Why not?"  
  
Augusta took a deep breath. "The properties of the crystal are such that it could contain all of the world's evil, and then some. The problem is, if the crystal breaks, I have no idea where the evil would go."  
  
"Your future self said something about vast wells of good and evil at the Earth's core," April related. "Maybe it would go there."  
  
"There's no room for maybes," Augusta replied firmly. "You remember what happened to Dolly. She absorbed only a small amount of my evil, but it was enough to push her over the edge. With my powers and knowledge, and a strong enough temptation, I could draw all the evil in the world into my own soul, and become an all-powerful demon. Which is why I must, at all costs, keep the balance of good and evil in my soul where it is."  
  
April yawned. "Your future self told me all that."  
  
"I'm sure she did," said Augusta. "I'm just repeating it for the benefit of the readers."  
  
----  
  
The next morning held no great surprises for the kids of Lakewood Elementary-- except for George. After he had waved his sister Sal off to her second grade class, Beat Simon approached him in the center court, a friendly grin spread over her aardvark face. "I hear your mum's expecting, George," she greeted him.  
  
"Expecting what?" George responded naively.  
  
"A baby, you silly goose." Beat gave him a playful cheek pinch and walked past, leaving him to wonder if his classmates were privy to a secret that he hadn't heard.  
  
A motorized wheelchair piloted by Van Cooper pulled alongside him on his way to Mr. Wald's room. "Congratulations, George," said the duck boy. "How many is that, three? Double that, and you'll be even with us."  
  
Unsure as to Van's meaning, George ignored him and set down his backpack on a desk in between Francine and Adil. From the corner of his eye he caught Fern waving and smiling at him, something she seldom went out of her way to do. In the corner of his other eye, Binky paused from his doodling to flash a thumbs-up.  
  
Mr. Wald stood and summoned the class to order. "Before we begin, I have some announcements. First, you'll be happy to know that Nigel Ratburn, who taught many of you in third grade, has accepted a teaching position at Stonecreek Elementary. On top of that, he is engaged to marry Carla Fuente...again."  
  
The applause began with Arthur, then spread through the classroom and became thunderous.  
  
The teacher stopped clapping and motioned for silence. "Second, someone in this classroom is expecting a new addition to his family."  
  
George suddenly felt very hot as all eyes focused their gaze on him. Yet he still didn't quite get it.  
  
"That's great, Mr. Wald," he spoke up. "Is it your first?"  
  
Everyone else started to laugh, even the teacher. They laughed uproariously until the confused expression on George's face made it clear that he truly knew nothing of what was going on.  
  
"It's your mom, George," Fern pointed out.  
  
The moose boy was taken aback. "M-my mom's having a baby? But she never told me!"  
  
"What do you mean, she never told you?" replied the equally astonished Fern. "Then why did you come to my house and use my computer to look up a gynecologist?"  
  
Baffled into speechlessness, George looked toward Mr. Wald as if he could help. "Who can tell me what a gynecologist does?" the teacher inquired of the class.  
  
Beat raised her hand. "A gynecologist is a doctor who treats pregnant women."  
  
"D'oh!" groaned George.  
  
"So...your mom's not having a baby after all?" Francine said to him.  
  
"No." George shook his head determinedly. "I made up the part about him being a gynecologist."  
  
"Who?" asked Francine.  
  
"Dr. Portinari."  
  
"Who's that?"  
  
"I don't know." George sighed. "That's what I'm trying to figure out."  
  
After a lesson on the various types of rodents and their feeding habits, the kids started to leave their desks. Mavis Cutler, in the meantime, took interest in the drawings which Binky had idly scratched out in his notebook. "Let me see those," she requested.  
  
Binky handed her the notebook, and she scanned the peculiar sketches. They were recognizable as internal organs--a heart, a brain, a lung, a stomach--and were amazingly detailed. "Binky, these are remarkable," said the hamster girl in awe.  
  
"Yeah," replied Binky, rising from his desk, "my mom got me a book about parts of the body, and I've been drawing them in my spare time."  
  
Suddenly inspired, Mavis laid the notebook on her desk and grabbed a pencil. A few quick strokes, and the brain drawing had arms, legs, eyes, and a goofy grin. Binky chuckled at the sight.  
  
"He's a little brain boy," explained Mavis, returning the notebook to Binky. "He goes to a school where all the kids are organs. There's a heart kid, a lung kid, and a stomach kid who does nothing but eat all the time."  
  
Binky felt his creative juices kick into gear. "He's the smartest kid in the school, because he's a brain," he expounded. "And the heart kid is a girl, and she has crushes on all the boys. And the lung kid..."  
  
"The lung kid talks all the time and never shuts up," said Mavis.  
  
She and Binky continued to describe their cast of characters as they strolled out of the classroom. "The brain boy remembers everything he learns," Mavis went on. "He can even remember when he was a baby brain. He's like a sponge."  
  
"All the other kids are jealous of him," Binky added. "They call him names, like Smartypants."  
  
"Then that's what we'll call him," Mavis proclaimed. "Spongebrain Smartypants."  
  
Binky grinned with amusement. "I like it."  
  
Mavis' face lit up. "Hmm...are you pondering what I'm pondering, Binky?"  
  
"I think so, Mavis," Binky answered. "But your dress wouldn't fit me, and I can't see with your glasses."  
  
----  
  
During morning recess, Dudley sat on a bench by the playground, poring over an issue of Boy's Life magazine. He wore a plaid, short-sleeved shirt and a pair of slacks that Alan had recently outgrown; Mrs. Powers had not, as of yet, purchased him any new clothing, out of fear that he might change back into a girl at any time. As he absorbed himself in reading, Salma Nordgren took a seat next to him and grinned sweetly.  
  
"Whatcha doing, Dudley?" asked the little moose girl, who was wearing the same red silk dress as the previous day.  
  
Dudley reciprocated with a rather sheepish smile. "I'm learning about careers for boys," he answered. "There are so many in this century. In the town where I grew up, a boy didn't have much choice but to become a farmer, and a girl became a farmer's wife."  
  
"I want to be a doctor," said Sal, gazing affectionately at the rat boy.  
  
"A beautiful girl like you should marry and have children," Dudley remarked.  
  
"I want to do that, too." Sal pushed herself an inch or two closer to Dudley as she spoke.  
  
Made nervous by the girl's apparent intentions, Dudley tried to think of a ladylike--or rather, gentlemanly--way to let her know he wasn't interested.  
  
"I was once a girl," he pointed out. "Did George tell you that?"  
  
"Yeah, he did," Sal replied, her enthusiasm undimmed. "That's so cool."  
  
"Why is it...cool?" asked the increasingly anxious Dudley.  
  
"Most boys are jerks," Sal observed. "They don't understand how girls feel inside. But you do. You have a unique perspective."  
  
Change the subject, thought Dudley. Must change the subject...  
  
"Er, tell me about the snake exhibit at the library," he inquired.  
  
TBC 


	5. Tom Cat Blues

"The biggest snake at the exhibit was a boa constrictor," Sal babbled on. It seemed to Dudley, who sat with half-open eyes picking at his lunch and listening to the moose girl's account, that she hadn't taken a breath for over five minutes. "Boa constrictors come from South America. A boa constrictor kills and eats small animals by wrapping around them and squeeeezing them to death." Mavis, who had heard Sal's description while walking behind Dudley's back, put her hand over her mouth and fled in disgust from the cafeteria. 

"That's very nice, Sal," said Dudley in the least insincere tone he could manage.

"Some boa constrictors are thirteen feet long, and live in trees," Sal went on.

Dudley lay down his fork. "I'm not very hungry," he lied. "Thank you for telling us about the snakes, Sal."

As the rat boy stood up and carried his tray away from the table, Arthur and Adil, who had been sitting on either side of him, bunched closer together. "I wish to know more about the boa constrictors," said Adil in his thick Turkish accent.

Bored and annoyed, Dudley strolled down a hallway until he found George, who was having difficulty extricating his head from his locker. Wrapping his arms around the moose boy, he lifted him up, turned him sideways, and yanked him out.

"Thanks, Dudley," said George. "Every year my antlers get bigger, and I have to be more careful."

"Perhaps you would be kind enough to do a favor for me now," was Dudley's response.

George eyed him curiously.

"Your sister won't leave me alone," Dudley complained. "She follows me everywhere. And all she can talk about is snakes."

"She likes snakes," George informed him. "She knows about fifty different kinds of snakes. You should see her snake drawings."

"When I lived with my mother," Dudley recounted, "I was responsible for keeping snakes out of the garden. Whenever I saw one I clubbed it, and then my mother slit it open and used its guts for potion. When times were hard, we often dined on snake soup."

George shrugged. "Well, not everybody likes snakes."

"I do," said Dudley, licking his lips. "They're quite tasty when they're done just right. But that's not important. George, I wish for you to tell your sister that I don't want a girlfriend."

George chuckled. "Sal's not trying to be your girlfriend. She just likes you because you said she was beautiful."

Dudley thought for a moment, then became crestfallen. "Oh, dear, I've blundered again," he groaned. "I forgot I was a boy when I said that. If a girl had told her she was beautiful, she would have thought nothing of it."

"If you don't want Sal following you around," said George as he reached carefully into his locker for a history book, "I think you should tell her so yourself."

Dudley sighed. "I can't do that. I don't want to hurt her feelings."

"I don't want to hurt her feelings either," replied George.

"What I meant to say was," Dudley clarified, "I don't want to hurt her feelings and have to watch."

----

"Mama," intoned Baby Kate. "Mama, mama, mama."

"Very good," gushed Mrs. Read, who was bouncing the diapered girl on her knee. "You're a little talker."

In another corner of the kitchen sat Pal, beaming with pride. "Congratulations, Kate," he commended her. "Your first grownup word."

Kate looked over at Pal and giggled. "Woof, woof, woof," was all she could hear from the dog.

Pal sighed. "It's going to be lonely here. I can always hang out with the X-Pets, I suppose."

An hour had passed since the end of school. D.W. was playing in her room with Nadine, while in the living room, Arthur had invited Alan, Van, and Muffy, and the four were eagerly anticipating a promised surprise from Francine.

"Hey, Muffy, don't you ever get tired of studying?" Alan asked the girl, who was working out long division problems over a textbook in her lap.

"Seventeen," replied Muffy without looking up.

"I wonder what it'll be like if Muffy doesn't make it to fifth grade," mused Arthur.

"Don't talk that way," Van chided him. "We're all going to fifth grade together, or not at all. Right, Muffy?"

"Thirty-two."

The front door burst open and Francine stood in the doorway, throwing up her arms with dramatic flair. "Ladies and gentlemen," she announced, "I present to you the most singular phenomenon ever to light up the world of jazz, the amazing, the incredible...April 'Caterwaul' Murphy!"

Arthur, Muffy, Van, and Alan watched and listened in astonishment as April marched over the threshold, belting out a rendition of 'Tom Cat Blues' on her tenor saxophone.

Pal laid his paws over his head and howled in agony, while the kids grinned ecstatically and clapped along to April's tune. When she finished playing, Francine led them in a round of applause. "You can't imagine what I had to go through to book her here," she told them.

"Are you sure you're not Sue Ellen?" asked Alan, gazing at the twelve-year-old cat girl's features.

"You can test me for HIV if you want," April offered.

"April has agreed to join our quartet," Francine informed the group.

"It's about time," said Van with a smile.

"What are we waiting for?" said Alan, jumping to his feet. "I'll get my cello. Francine, get your drums."

As Alan hurried through the still-opened door, Muffy closed her math book and rose to follow him. "You guys go ahead and play. I need to study." On her way out, she stopped and examined April's attire with a critical eye. "About that dress..." she began, but ended with, "...oh, never mind."

Arthur watched the monkey girl depart in disbelief. "Wow, she's too busy to even give fashion advice."

"Must be space aliens or something," quipped Francine as she turned to leave. "I'll be right back with my drum kit."

April took a seat with the others as Francine exited. "I can play drums too," she told them, "but you already have a drummer."

Attracted by the noise, D.W. bounded down the stairway and into the living room, where she gasped at the sight of April. "Hotchie motchie!" the little girl exclaimed in wonder.

"You must be D.W.," April greeted her.

"How come you get to grow faster than the rest of us, Sue Ellen?" D.W. demanded to know.

"I'm not Sue Ellen," April insisted.

"Like (bleep) you're not!"

"Dora Winifred!" scolded Mrs. Read from the kitchen.

D.W. had crossed the line this time--her mother had placed Kate on the floor, and was approaching her with a stern expression that could only mean punishment. As she braced herself for what would surely come, the phone rang.

_Saved by the bell_, thought D.W. as Mrs. Read answered the call.

"April, it's for you."

The cat girl jumped up and took the receiver. "Hello?"

"April! Do you have the time reverser?" It was Augusta's voice.

"No, I left it in the desk," April replied.

"It's not there," said Augusta in a fearful tone. "I can't find it anywhere!"

TBC


	6. Snake Killer

"Are you sure you looked everywhere?" April asked Augusta, who was seated at the desk in her apartment, wearing a striped blouse, dark red slacks, and sandals.  
  
"I left no stone unturned," the rabbit woman insisted. "If it were anywhere near here, I'd be able to locate it with my magic sense."  
  
"We've got to find it," said April as she bent her head to the floor and scanned carefully underneath the bed. "If someone else uses it, they could cause a disaster."  
  
The cat girl threw open one drawer after another, pushing aside Augusta's newly purchased clothes in a futile search for the lost time reverser. She stopped abruptly upon hearing a knock at the door.  
  
"Oh, no, it's Maria," groused Augusta, rising to answer it. April hurried from the bedroom, trying to act unworried and inconspicious as she helped to greet the smiling squirrel woman.  
  
"Sorry for being a little early," said the casually dressed Maria Harris.  
  
Augusta slapped her forehead. "Oh, the dress! I would've put it on, but I lost something important, and we've spent the last hour looking for it. I'll go change right now."  
  
"I'll wait," offered Maria. As she watched Augusta grab a floral dress from the wardrobe and disappear into the bathroom, she struck up a conversation with April. "What did you lose? Maybe I can help you look."  
  
April waved her hands dismissively. "Uh, we don't need your help, but thanks anyway."  
  
Maria shot her a quizzical look.  
  
"What brings you here?" asked April.  
  
"Tomorrow's Augusta's first day as a real estate agent," Maria answered with a hint of pride. "She agreed to let me teach her how to fix her hair and put on makeup, so she won't look like--if you'll pardon the expression--something the cat dragged in."  
  
"I'll pardon the expression," said April. "This time."  
  
----  
  
The next day, Binky and Mavis spent every free minute at school together, giggling and laughing while they labored over a drawing. Whenever one of their friends happened by and attempted a curious glance at the paper, they covered it. The artistic project was "top secret", they were told.  
  
Salma continued to haunt Dudley, seldom granting him a moment of peace. Snake this, snake that. The rat boy couldn't bear to be rude to her, and pretended to relish their conversations, but his patience was reaching the breaking point.  
  
She came running to him during afternoon recess, calling out, "Dudley! Dudley, come quick!" With an exasperated groan, he followed the moose girl to a thicket of trees on the edge of the school property. He had to run, as Sal was apparently in a terrific hurry.  
  
"Look, Dudley," she said, pointing. Through the bare dirt between the trees slithered a red striped snake, about three feet long, its tongue flickering in and out. "It's a thamnophis sirtalis," Sal informed him. "An eastern garter snake. It's the biggest one I've ever seen. Will you help me catch it? Maybe my mom will let me keep it as a pet."  
  
Dudley could finally endure no more. After giving Sal a wordless, dirty glare, he shrieked furiously and leaped into the sky. The girl's eyes widened with horror as Dudley's well-aimed jump brought his feet down directly over the hapless snake's head and neck. He then stamped repeatedly with his sneakers as the creature's body hopped and writhed. Finally he stepped back and looked at the crushed, dead serpent with an expression of satisfaction.  
  
He seemed not to care about the tears that had started to flow from Sal's eyes, or her anguished sobs. "Murderer!" the girl screamed.  
  
"Murderer, am I?" replied Dudley callously. "And I suppose your precious boa constrictors have never harmed a living thing."  
  
Sal ran away, weeping bitterly, as Dudley poked at the snake's lifeless form with the tip of his shoe. "How very fortunate that you happened along," he said aloud. "Fortunate for me, that is."  
  
Word of Dudley's heartless deed spread rapidly through the school, as nearly everybody, students and faculty alike, was able at one time or another to hear Sal's pathetic wailing.  
  
"Georgie," she sobbed to her brother as he was about to enter Mr. Wald's classroom. "Georgie, Dudley killed the poor little snake. He jumped up and down on its head. He's a horrible, evil boy!"  
  
Disturbed by the news, George looked up and down the hallway and saw Dudley some distance away. Pulling Sal along by the hand, he approached the rat boy and confronted him with a scowl. "Is that true?" he asked accusingly. "Did you kill a snake in front of my sister?"  
  
"Yes, I did," Dudley answered jokingly. "It was quite a struggle."  
  
"Snake killer!" Sal bellowed at him. "I hate you!"  
  
"Snakes are pests," Dudley retorted. "You're a pest, too."  
  
Sal wailed louder than ever as the unfeeling boy walked past her and into the classroom.  
  
George pulled a slightly used handkerchief from his pocket and wiped Sal's tears with it. "Stay here," he instructed, pressing the cloth into her hand. "I'll be right back."  
  
When he found the desk where Dudley had seated himself, he looked at the boy scoldingly. "What you did was mean. You owe my sister an apology."  
  
Dudley tossed open his notebook, half-pretending not to listen. "All I did was kill a snake," he said petulantly. "Did that become a crime in the last three hundred years?"  
  
----  
  
George's success in wringing an apology out of Dudley was matched by Augusta's success in attracting customers to her newly organized real estate office. Unsatisfied with sitting in a chair, looking pretty, and feeling stupid, she entertained herself by reading home improvement magazines and causing electrical sparks to fly from the fingers of one hand to the other. She soon became adept at the latter, and started to wonder if she should have taken the stage magician route.  
  
At shortly after four p.m., a potential customer finally stepped into her office. He was a young-looking, well-groomed bulldog man who wore a navy blue business suit and black shoes, and carried a brown leather briefcase. Augusta quickly rose from her chair and shook hands with the man.  
  
"I'm happy to meet you, Augusta," he said, reading her name from the inscribed plaque that sat on her desk.  
  
"Are you looking to move into the area?" Augusta asked him.  
  
"I certainly am," he replied with a grin. As he sat down he continued, "I heard so many stories about Elwood City, and now I'm here, and they're all true. I'm planning to move my practice here from Philadelphia. I'm a psychiatrist."  
  
"Really," said Augusta, trying to sound intrigued. "And your name is...?"  
  
"Rick," answered the man. "Dr. Rick Portinari."  
  
TBC 


	7. Dudley's Worst Behavior

In the early evening, April came to the Read home for dinner and music-making with the newly re-formed Sue E. Armstrong Quartet. As she deliberated with Alan, Arthur, Francine, and Van about where to schedule their next concert, George was lollygagging on the couch in his own house, watching a rerun of Star Trek on TV. 

"We are a peace-loving people," stated the alien Glinkon leader to Captain Kirk from the Enterprise viewscreen. "Centuries ago we genetically modified our race to eliminate all disposition toward violence. No matter the temptation, even to protect our own lives, we cannot be moved upon to harm another living creature."

"Then...how...do...you...propose...to...defend...yourselves...against..the... Klingons?" asked Kirk with his usual pretentious pauses.

"We do not," replied the alien. "If it be the will of Molotok that we perish or become slaves, then so shall it be."

So engrossed was George in the sci-fi drama that he almost didn't notice the bitter sobs coming from his sister's room. His heart touched, the moose boy pushed himself from the couch and went to see if he could offer Sal any comfort.

He found the girl slouched over her small, flower-painted desk, her hands covering her tear-soaked eyes. "Don't cry, Sal," said George, putting his arms around her neck.

Lying on the desk before her was a sheet of paper on which she had made a drawing with colored pencils. It showed a gloating rat boy with horns on his temples and a pitchfork in his hand, and a striped snake skewered on the pitchfork. Above this image was one of a smiling snake with angel wings, ascending through the clouds.

Sal turned to her brother, her eyes red and sore. "The poor little snake didn't do anything wrong," she said plaintively. "It wasn't even poisonous."

George pulled Sal's head against his chest. "I'm sorry you had to see that," he said softly. "Tomorrow when we go to school, I'll get Dudley to apologize, one way or another."

And the next morning he set about to do exactly that. Finding Dudley leaning on a pillar in the center court shortly before the beginning of classes, George confronted him with Sal in tow. "I want to talk to you, Dudley," he barked.

"About what?" said the rat boy nonchalantly.

"You broke Sal's heart when you killed that snake."

Dudley took a step closer to George and Sal. "Are you still dwelling on that stupid snake?" he berated them. "I don't know what you see in those creatures. As far as I'm concerned, the only good snake is a dead snake."

Sal started to cry again. "Now look what you've done," George reprimanded the boy. "I demand that you apologize to her."

Dudley shrugged. "Apologize for what? It's her fault for being so emotionally attached to those vermin." Drawn by the sounds of discord, a mob of children started to gather around the trio.

George felt indignation overwhelm him as his sister's weeping grew in volume. "You insensitive louse!" he insulted Dudley.

The rat boy gasped in outrage. "Louse? How dare you! If I were a boy, I would..."

A sudden realization cut Dudley's sentence short. He and George glowered at each other, and the world appeared to stand still.

"You would what?" George responded defiantly.

His question was promptly answered. The air seemed charged with electricity as Dudley's fist tore through it on its way to George's face.

The moose boy felt a sudden pain in his right eye, and struggled to keep his footing. Sal screamed. The surrounding kids gasped.

George wanted with all his heart to avenge himself on the grinning Dudley, but the pain and shock were too much. All he could do was burst into tears and flee toward the nurse's office, with Sal pursuing him anxiously.

The next thing Dudley felt, after tremendous pride, was the admiring gazes of two members of the group that had assembled to witness the fight--the Tough Customer kids, Molly and Rattles. As the other kids wandered away to their respective classes, these two approached Dudley with friendly smirks.

"I guess you're a boy after all," said Rattles.

"You sure showed that wimp who's boss," added Molly.

"Indeed I did," said Dudley, looking down at his still-clenched fist. "I rather enjoyed that. But I fear Principal Haney shall inflict a grievous punishment on me."

Rattles gaped at the boy in confusion. "I think grievous means bad," Molly informed him.

"The worst he'll give you is a few days' detention," Rattles told Dudley. "And if you stick with us, we'll teach you how to avoid punishment altogether."

Dudley looked at the floor thoughtfully. "I suppose it's in my nature to cause trouble, now that I'm a boy," he mused. "I shall consider your kind offer."

"You talk like a dork," said Molly. "Work on that."

The next sight she and Rattles beheld was not at all unfamiliar--the towering figure of Herbert Haney, glaring sternly, hands on hips.

"I didn't do it, man," claimed Rattles.

"It was him," said Molly, pointing at Dudley.

In the principal's office, Mr. Haney was perusing Dudley's file and reflecting on how little information it contained. "Dudley Proctor," he muttered to the boy who sat across the desk from him. "Funny, a girl with the same last name appeared out of nowhere a month ago, and she disappeared at about the same time that you showed up."

"I was that girl, sir," said Dudley.

"Now don't get smart with me," warned Haney, waving the stem end of a lollipop menacingly. "Stay on my good side, and I'll treat this as a first-time offense."

"But it's true," Dudley insisted. "I nearly overthrew the world with my magical powers, but Prunella Prufrock tricked me into turning myself into a boy. Sir."

The principal fiddled with his glasses. "Next you'll tell me that you were born in the seventeenth century, and that your parents died three hundred years ago," he said incredulously.

"I would tell you that," replied Dudley, "and it would be the truth, but you wouldn't believe me. But that's not relevant. I'm being disciplined for striking another child, not for telling tall tales."

"I'm losing patience with you," said Haney with a slight snarl to his voice. "I was going to give you only three days' detention, but now I've decided to increase it to five."

Confusion and concern gripped Dudley's heart as he assessed his situation.

"It appears that the longer I remain in your office, the longer my sentence will become," he said, rising from the chair. "I bid you good day, sir."

"Wait!" exclaimed Mr. Haney as the rat boy walked casually from his office.

It turned into a miserable class period for George, who sat at the back of the room with an icepack over his right eye, fuming and wishing for revenge. Dudley sat near the front, fully cognizant that all the other kids were staring at him and wondering what had given him the boldness to attack one of his classmates. Their reactions didn't embarrass him; rather, they filled him with a sort of reckless self-satisfaction. _So this is how it truly feels to be a boy_, he thought. _I like it._

When class was out, Dudley was the first through the door, as he had urgent business to discuss with Molly and Rattles. Some of the other kids--Binky, Mavis, Van, and Muffy--stayed behind to console the battered moose boy.

"I can't believe he hit you," said Binky. "I never hit you."

"You have to cut him a little slack," said Muffy. "If I turned into a boy, I'd lash out violently too."

"I hope they suspend him for the rest of the school year," said Van.

Mavis, for her part, handed George a sheet of paper with Xerox-copied drawings on it. "Here's something that'll cheer you up," she said with a grin.

Spongebrain Smartypants Issue 1, by Mavis Cutler and Binky Barnes, read the crudely handwritten title. George scanned the drawings with his good eye, and soon found himself laughing out loud.

TBC


	8. Spongebrain Smartypants

Spongebrain Smartypants (or Spongebrain for short) was a fourth-grade brain kid (literally an anthropomorphic brain) who was smarter than anyone in his class, including his teacher, Mrs. Strong (a muscle). He had many friends who often came to him for help with their homework, but his closest friends were Hale the Lung (a boy who never stopped talking), Faith the Heart (a girl who was secretly in love with Spongebrain), Phil the Stomach (a boy who could think of nothing but food), and Libby the Liver (a perpetually overworked girl). 

It was a typical day in Mrs. Strong's class. The teacher, who looked like a long piece of tendon with arms, legs, eyes, and a dress, was writing a word on the blackboard: NON-SEQUITUR. Turning to her pupils, she asked, "Can anyone tell me what a non-sequitur is?"

Spongebrain, as was his habit, raised his hand. "A non-sequitur is a statement that has no logical connection to the statements that..."

"Titus Andronicus was Shakespeare's first tragedy," Hale the Lung interrupted.

"...precede or follow it," Spongebrain concluded.

"Very good, Spongebrain," said Mrs. Strong. "Can anyone give me an example of a non-sequitur?"

Libby the Liver raised her hand. "The Galapagos tortoise has a lifespan of 200 years," she said proudly.

The teacher shot her a confused look. "What does that have to do with my question?" she wanted to know.

Phil the Stomach, who was stuffing cookies into himself with one hand, raised his other hand. "Beware the Jabberwock, my son," he recited. "The jaws that bite, the claws that catch."

Mrs. Strong held up her hands and scowled. "Enough of this nonsense. Now will someone please give me an example of a..."

"The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here," replied Faith the Heart, "but it can never forget what they did here."

The final frame of the cartoon showed Mrs. Strong wearing a sombrero, playing a guitar, and singing, "My hat, it has three corners, three corners has my hat..."

George laughed so hard at the strip that he dropped the icepack over his right eye so he could clutch his sides. "I'm glad you like it," Binky told him.

"Binky did most of the work on the drawings," said Mavis. "I came up with the joke."

"We're working on Issue 2 now," added Binky.

Holding the cartoon in his left hand and the icepack in his right, George strolled out of the classroom, still chuckling from amusement. The humorous drawing caused him to momentarily forget his worries, but it wasn't long before his mind began again to dwell on his two pressing problems--tracking down the possible alien invader, Dr. Portinari, and getting back at Dudley for punching him. He didn't want a simple rematch; he had never fought anyone, and wouldn't know where to start if he tried. But his bruised eye and wounded pride weren't the only casualties--there was the matter of his sister's honor.

A week's detention didn't dampen Dudley's mischievous spirits, as he was determined to further explore this facet of boyhood. Through the cafeteria he walked nonchalantly, passing by a table where four girls--Francine, Beat, Fern, and Prunella--were eating lunch together. He had legitimate grievances with three of the four; Beat and Fern had persecuted him for using a love potion on them, and Prunella was responsible for the fact that he was a boy. Francine had shown him only kindness, so naturally, she would be his next victim.

"Argh!" cried Francine, bolting to her feet and gyrating as if a swarm of bees had infested her shirt. Dudley turned and made an "innocent observer" face as the other girls attempted to aid Francine and determine what was wrong with her.

When the monkey girl finally regained her composure, she pointed angrily at Dudley. "You did it!" she bellowed, approaching him with an expression of menace. "You no-good, dirty rat!"

Dudley responded in a hurt tone of voice. "I did nothing, and I am deeply offended that you accuse me based solely on my ethnicity."

"I know it was you," Francine insisted. "You were walking by at the exact moment the ice cube went down my shirt."

"Perhaps one of your lady friends is the culprit," Dudley suggested.

Francine looked over her shoulder at Fern, who had been sitting next to her. "It wasn't me," said the poodle girl.

"Why would Fern do a thing like that?" Francine asked Dudley with an incredulous glare.

The rat boy shrugged. "Why would I? You and I have been friends since I arrived here."

"Not since you gave George a black eye," replied Francine, folding her arms smugly.

"That was between me and him," said Dudley. "Now, unless you desire to press formal charges, I'll be on my way."

Unsure of herself, Francine looked back and forth between Fern and Dudley as the boy walked off toward the cafeteria exit.

When he reached the hallway, Dudley was greeted by Molly and Rattles, who wore congratulatory grins. "That was really brave of you," Molly remarked. "Francine Frensky is totally fearless."

"Yeah, she fought me in a dress once," added Rattles.

"It wasn't easy," said Dudley with a hint of sadness. "Francine is one of my best friends."

"You don't need friends like her," Molly told him. "They'll turn their backs on you as soon as you get in a tight spot. We're your real friends. We'll stand up for you, no matter what."

----

"You don't need friends like them," Alan said to Dudley as the two boys walked along the street after the end of school. "They'll turn their backs on you as soon as you get in a tight spot. Just ask Binky. He spent last summer in juvenile detention because of them."

"Whether they are true friends or false remains to be seen," Dudley answered. "But their lifestyle is appealing, and I wish to embrace it."

"That may be harder than you think," said Alan as he pulled open the door to his house. "You see, you and I have something that the Tough Customers don't."

The first sight they saw was Alan's mother, leaning against a wall, her face a mask of disappointment and indignation.

She raised a finger at Dudley. "The principal told me what happened," she announced. "You're grounded until further notice."

The rat boy stopped in his tracks. He hadn't counted on being punished by both the school authorities_and_ his foster mother...

"Parents who care," Alan finished his thought.

"You should be ashamed of yourself," Mrs. Powers told the sulking Dudley as he shuffled into the living room.

"Indeed I should," acknowledged Dudley. "But strangely enough, I'm not. Maybe boys feel less shame than girls." Taking a seat on the couch, he picked up the remote and made a Bunny League episode appear on the TV screen.

"I'm a boy, and I feel plenty of shame," said Alan, dropping onto the couch next to him.

"Then perhaps not all boys are alike," mused Dudley. "Some boys are good by nature, while others are bad. I was turned into a boy by an evil spell, so perhaps that makes me a bad boy."

On the screen, the Bunny League struggled to rescue the captured Bionic Bunny from the grasp of Scrim, the sinister leader of an alien invasion force.

"You won't get away with this, Scrim!" barked Bionic Bunny, who was shackled hand and foot with reinforced steel chains.

"I have heard enough of your doomed cliches," snarled the diminutive Scrim. "Your puny doomed defenses are no match for our superior dooming technology. Soon your doomed planet and its filthy doomed human inhabitants will be under our dooming control! Muwahahaha!"

The grim scene was also followed by George, who sat in his living room with a black-and-blue right eye. His mother approached him with a glass of water in one hand and a pill in the other, saying, "Here's your aspirin, dear."

George washed the painkiller down his throat without removing his eyes from the screen. "You watch too many of those space shows," Mrs. Nordgren admonished him. "I'm afraid you'll lose the ability to tell fantasy from reality."

"Don't be silly, Mom," George responded. "This is fantasy. The show about the people who get plastic surgery to look like celebrities...that's reality."

As his mother shook her head and walked away, George wondered whether an actual alien attack on Earth would be as devastating as what Scrim and the other space overlords on TV threatened to unleash. Would the planet remain livable? Would humans become slaves? Would their brains be removed from their bodies and used to control machines?

_Maybe I'm crazy for believing in aliens_, he thought. _But Buster's not crazy. He wouldn't lie about something so important. I've got to find this Portinari guy...but I have no idea where to look._

----

It so happened that Portinari was with Augusta Winslow, looking over a small pastel-green house in a neighborhood on the west end of Elwood City.

"And there's plenty of space in the yard," said the attractively-dressed rabbit woman, who held a clipboard in one hand, "so you can add a third bedroom, if you ever need one."

"I like it," said Portinari. "The construction is solid, and the location can't be beat--right next to the bus route."

"If you'd like, I can start running a credit check right now," Augusta offered.

"Please do," replied Portinari. "And one other thing..."

Augusta turned to him and forced a smile. A block away, she noticed two little boys who were learning to rollerblade on the side of the street.

"I'd like to get to know you better," said the bulldog man. "Maybe we could get together for coffee on Saturday."

At first Augusta had difficulty registering what she had just heard, and then she feared how she might react emotionally. It was the first time a man had asked her on a date. Was she ready? How could it hurt? He wasn't bad-looking, and she had to start sooner or later...

"Augusta?"

She snapped to attention, realizing that she had been staring blankly at Portinari for what must have been a full half-minute.

"Coffee," she intoned, trying hard not to stumble over her words. "Yes. I say yes to coffee."

"Excellent," said Portinari. "You've been here longer than I have. Where can one find good coffee in Elwood?"

----

Saturday came quickly, and Maria had done everything in her power to help Augusta prepare mentally for the upcoming rendezvous with Portinari. On the morning of the fateful day, an equally momentous event took place at the Crosswire house.

Muffy had scarcely had time to bathe before she was called into the living room by her parents. Judging by the somber looks on their faces, she guessed that either one of the servants had died or quit, or her lifestyle was about to change for the worse.

Mrs. Crosswire took a deep breath. She was the one who customarily delivered bad news, such as the announcement that Muffy would be transferred to a private school, and it was invariably preceded by a deep breath.

"Your father and I have decided to sell the mansion," she stated.

TBC


	9. First Date

Sell the mansion. The words cut through Muffy's heart like a flaming arrow.  
  
"But I've always lived here," she protested. "I don't want to live anywhere else."  
  
"We need the money to keep the business afloat," her father explained.  
  
He said it with such finality that Muffy could plainly see there was no way out. She would have to adjust to a new place of residence...a new neighborhood...new school...new friends...  
  
"I understand, Dad," she said sadly. "If it's to keep Crosswire Motors going, I'm willing to move into a smaller mansion."  
  
"We won't be moving into a mansion at all," Mrs. Crosswire informed her. "Until things pick up, we may have to content ourselves with a condominium."  
  
The flaming arrowhead in Muffy's heart plunged in deeper. A tiny condo with a tiny bedroom? No room for paintings or ornate sculptures? No servants? Would she have to clean her own room?  
  
"I can take this," she told herself repeatedly. "I lived through worse when I ran away with Angela." But this was different--it would affect her parents and baby brother as well.  
  
Seeing Muffy's glum expression, her mother switched over to the couch where the girl sat and placed comforting arms around her. "We'll be all right, dear," she said softly.  
  
"I know, Mom," Muffy answered. "It's just that I always wondered what our lives would be like if we were poor like everybody else, and now I'm going to find out...and I'm afraid."  
  
"We're not going to be poor," Mrs. Crosswire ensured her. "Just less rich."  
  
Her comfortable existence falling to pieces before her eyes, Muffy could think of only one thing to do. Pushing her mother's arms away, she jumped down to the floor. "I'm going to take a walk," she announced morosely.  
  
"Don't go too far," said Mrs. Crosswire.  
  
As the crestfallen girl walked toward the pine doors of what would soon no longer be her home, she heard her father discussing a matter with her mother. "Craig refuses to do business with me. He thinks I'm untrustworthy. I'll have to find a new agent--someone who's good enough to negotiate a fair price for the mansion, but doesn't cost too much."  
  
Shuffling aimlessly down the sidewalk, Muffy tried to forget her own misfortune by bringing to mind someone whose troubles were far greater--her friend Augusta. Thrust into a new body, forced to begin life anew, blessed with powers she feared to take advantage of--Augusta Winslow definitely needed a big break, like the Crosswire account. Muffy knew she had to contact Augusta quickly, before her father made other arrangements. But her friend was probably too busy readying herself for her first date as a female, a meeting over coffee with a fellow from Philadelphia named...  
  
The swelling had gone down around George's right eye, as the boy observed with satisfaction while gazing into the mirror. Hearing a knock at the door, he called out, "Sal, get that."  
  
A moment later his sister hurried into his bedroom and informed him, "Georgie, it's Muffy."  
  
The first thing Muffy did when George greeted her was to run her fingers over the sore flesh around his eye. "It's getting better," she remarked. "I've got something you can cover it up with."  
  
"No, but thanks anyway," replied George.  
  
"I came here to ask you something," said Muffy, lowering her hand. "The other day in class you said you were looking for some doctor from Philadelphia."  
  
"Yeah, Dr. Portinari," responded George, his interest piqued.  
  
Muffy snapped her fingers. "That's his name," she realized.  
  
"You know him?" asked George.  
  
"Not personally," Muffy answered. "But it so happens that Augusta Winslow has a date with him today."  
  
George's eyes widened. "Augusta? You mean the guy who turned into..."  
  
"Yes, him. I mean, her."  
  
"Where? When?" George's voice rose to an urgent pitch.  
  
"At noon, at the Muffin Man."  
  
George glanced quickly at his watch. "Thanks, Muffy," he said with elation. "That's all I need to know."  
  
"It's more than you need to know," Muffy silently realized. Had she given away too much?  
  
Relief washed over George as he watched Muffy walk out of his house. Finally, a concrete lead in the strange case of the alien invaders...  
  
----  
  
The Muffin Man Coffeehouse had been open for a month, in a lot half a block from the Sugar Bowl. An old koala man named Mr. Holden operated the establishment, and was fighting a moderately successful battle against the nearby Snarebucks outlet with his advertising slogan, "I Got Plenty o' Muffin".  
  
Unbeknownst to his parents and sister, George had waited at an inconspicuous corner table since 11:30 a.m., eager and determined to learn all he could about the mysterious Dr. Portinari. The smell of coffee filled the little shop as numerous customers filed in, attracted by the homemade pastries and over one hundred different variations on a cup of joe.  
  
At about 11:45, Mr. Holden stepped up to George's table and eyed the boy curiously. "Are you waiting for your parents, mate?" he asked in a gravelly voice.  
  
"Um, yes," George lied. "They'll be here at twelve."  
  
"G'day, then," said the koala man, smiling. As he turned away, George could hear him muttering, "So I'm running a bloody day care center now."  
  
11:50. 11:55. Being a little boy, George naturally grew impatient, but was determined to see his plan through. At 11:57, someone hurried through the coffeehouse door whom he had hoped not to see. Muffy.  
  
Spotting the moose boy, she quickly seated herself across the table from him. "What are you doing here?" she asked scoldingly.  
  
"I want to meet Dr. Portinari," replied George, who was beginning to feel anxious.  
  
"You don't just walk up to someone who's on a date and introduce yourself," Muffy chided him. "It's impolite."  
  
"Then what are you doing here?" asked George, turning the tables on the girl.  
  
Muffy pulled a small notebook and ball-point pen from her pocket. "I'm here to observe Augusta's poise and posture, write down her mistakes, and help her to improve."  
  
"Okay," said George. "You watch her, and I'll watch Dr. Portinari."  
  
"Why are you so interested in him?" inquired Muffy.  
  
While George tried to fabricate a reason, Muffy turned her head in surprise upon seeing Augusta step through the coffeehouse entrance in a pair of white high-heeled shoes. She wore the same floral dress she had utilized for her first day as a real estate agent, and her blond hair was set in place with clips. Noticing Muffy's presence, she smiled and winked.  
  
The monkey girl watched her with dreamy eyes. "She's beautiful," she marveled. "But her toes are pointing outward." She quickly scribbled a line on her notepad.  
  
Augusta was followed by a black-haired bulldog man in a gray suit. "That's him," Muffy notified George. "That's Portinari."  
  
Disappointment flooded George's heart. Dr. Portinari appeared to him as an ordinary person, scarcely distinguishable from hundreds of others he had seen. No scales, no green skin, no oversized forehead, no tentacle nose. Nothing to suggest he might be extraterrestrial in origin.  
  
Had Buster been mistaken about him?  
  
TBC 


	10. Possibility of a Second

"What kind of movies do you like?" Portinari asked Augusta as he took a sip of his espresso.  
  
"I like historical epics and gritty, realistic dramas," was Augusta's reply.  
  
"So do I," marveled Portinari. "That's unusual. Most women I meet like romantic comedies."  
  
On the other end of the coffeehouse, Muffy and George watched the conversation between the two, although they couldn't hear the words exchanged.  
  
"She's slouching," observed Muffy, writing another note on her pad.  
  
George, meanwhile, wondered about Buster's warning. Was it possible that only the rabbit boy could see through the alien's camouflage? Or had Buster simply played an April Fools prank, and forgotten to admit it the day after?  
  
"I saw an excellent film last week," Portinari went on. "A prison drama called 'Don't Feed the Animals'."  
  
"Oh, I loved that one," said Augusta, lifting her coffee mug to her cherry lips. "It's definitely going to take home some Oscars. I just don't understand why they released it in March."  
  
"Sip, don't gulp," Muffy wrote down on her notepad.  
  
The time wore on. George started to shift in his seat as Augusta and Portinari seemed to find no end of things to talk about. He wished something would happen--Portinari's phony face falling off, a spaceship descending from the stratosphere to transport the man away, or simply the winding down of the date.  
  
Finally Portinari looked at his watch. "I'm afraid I have an engagement soon," he told Augusta. "It's been wonderful talking to you and getting to know you. We have a remarkable amount in common."  
  
"Yes, we do," Augusta acknowledged.  
  
The next thing Muffy noticed was Augusta writing something in her appointment book. "He's asking her for a second date?" she said in amazement, glancing down at her notebook. "After all the blunders she made?"  
  
Before long Augusta and Portinari were walking out of the coffee shop, trading smiles and pleasantries. Muffy folded her notebook and stuck in her pocket, muttering something about beginner's luck. When she looked up again, George had disappeared.  
  
Running all the way, the moose boy reached his house, snatched up the phone, and quickly dialed Buster's Chicago number. "Hello?" came his friend's voice.  
  
"I just saw Dr. Portinari," George informed him. "He looks normal to me. You're not trying to prank me, are you?"  
  
"It's no prank, I swear," Buster insisted. "What did you find out about him?"  
  
"Not much," replied George. "He's a psychiatrist, and he just had a date with Augusta Winslow."  
  
The line fell silent for a few seconds.  
  
"Augusta Winslow?" Buster spoke up. "You mean she's still a lady?"  
  
"Yeah," said George. "I guess she's stuck. And so's Dudley."  
  
"Hmm," Buster mused. "That must be really weird."  
  
"I'll try to find out more about Dr. Portinari," George offered. "Talk to you later, Buster."  
  
As Buster laid down the receiver in his Chicago apartment, he started to fantasize about what his and his friends' lives would be like if the spells cast on them by Dolly the witch had never been reversed.  
  
He woke up one morning to a terrible shock. "Argh!" he cried. "Fern, what are you doing in my bed?"  
  
"We're in MY bed," Fern pointed out. "We're a two-headed person now, remember?"  
  
In Arthur's house, D.W. was blissfully cuddling a tabby cat by the kitchen table. "I'm so glad to have a kitty for a big brother," she gushed.  
  
"Let me go, D.W.," said the cat. "It's almost time for school."  
  
In the Crosswire mansion, Muffy's parents were admiring a solid gold statue in the likeness of their little girl. "We may have lost a daughter," said Mrs. Crosswire, "but at least we got a nice new statue."  
  
While the rabbit and aardvark Beats were walking to school together, Rabbit Beat paused to pick an apple from an overhanging tree. "Ouch," grunted the knot in the center of the tree that looked like Binky's face.  
  
The ceiling of Mr. Wald's classroom slid open, and a construction crane slowly lowered the fifty-foot-long George into the room, where he sprawled helplessly on the floor. The two-headed Buster-Fern creature staggered clumsily into the room and took a seat, followed by Arthur the Cat, who dreaded what he had to face every morning.  
  
"Hey, look, everybody!" exclaimed the untransformed Francine. "Arthur's naked!"  
  
Blushing, Arthur bounded onto a desk and started to lick his paw, while the teacher commenced with his lesson. "Let's review national capitols. First, what is the capitol of Sweden?"  
  
"Stockholm," thought George, but try as he might, he couldn't raise his enormous arm.  
  
When class let out, Fern and Buster maneuvered their shared body toward the washrooms. They were wearing a specially tailored outfit that was a blouse and skirt on one side, and a shirt and jeans on the other. Next to the boys' and girls' rooms a third room had been constructed for two-headed half-boy half-girl people.  
  
Maybe Augusta Winslow didn't have it so badly after all, thought Buster.  
  
----  
  
Augusta herself was thinking the same thing as she walked into her apartment and kicked her high-heeled shoes to the side. April, who sat at the desk reading an ancient alchemy book, swiveled in her chair. "How did it go?" she asked excitedly.  
  
"Very well," Augusta replied. "Everything came naturally. I didn't feel strange at all."  
  
"That's funny," said April in a slightly surprised tone. "Your future self went out with about ten different men before she..."  
  
The girl suddenly fell silent, and embarrassment spread over her face.  
  
"What's wrong?" asked Augusta, who had started to go through her mail.  
  
"I don't want to spoil your love life by giving away the future," said April meekly.  
  
Augusta thought for a moment. "Yes, you're right. Better if I remain in suspense. Any sign of the time reverser?"  
  
"Nope," April answered.  
  
"It's essential that we find it," said Augusta, stepping into the bathroom to change out of her dress. "I've been driving all over Elwood as part of my job, so if it's anywhere in the city, I'll sense its presence eventually."  
  
April went back to reading about the use of wormwood in good-luck charms. A few seconds later Augusta poked her blond rabbit head out of the bathroom door. "You said my future self dated ten different men," she said to April. "Does that mean I won't marry Rick Portinari?" Her voice carried a hint of earnestness.  
  
The cat girl lowered her book. "I don't know who you'll marry. I know who your future self married, but you won't necessarily marry the same man, because I'm changing the course of your future just by being here."  
  
Augusta's expression became thoughtful again.  
  
"You like him, don't you?" said April with a grin.  
  
"Yes, I do," was Augusta's response. "He reminds me of me when I was ten days younger."  
  
TBC 


	11. The Cat's Out of the Bag

Saturday afternoon was drawing to a close, and Arthur's friends Francine, Alan, and Fern had gathered at his house for jazz practice. Francine had set up her drum kit next to the piano, and Alan's cello case was leaning against a wall.  
  
"It's entirely possible that she traveled backwards in time," said Alan to the others. "I've done so myself."  
  
"I didn't believe in time travel before," replied Francine. "But after all the weird things that have happened, I'm ready to believe in anything."  
  
"I did a little investigating," Fern reported. "Sue Ellen's dad said he was called to Karjakistan on an emergency mission. But at the time there was no emergency. The country was in the middle of a cease fire, which didn't break down until a week ago. And there's more. I called the Karjakistanian embassy, and they have no record of a diplomat named Hank Armstrong working there."  
  
Arthur glanced across the living room at Francine, and noticed that the girl was looking rather uneasy.  
  
"But that's not the best part," Fern went on. "I talked to Van's sister Odette. She's April's best friend. She said the two of them went swimming, and they were wearing two-piece suits, and she saw scars all up and down the left side of April's body--but not on her left arm."  
  
Surprise filled Arthur and Alan's faces as they recalled the day when Sue Ellen had stood before them with a magically healed arm.  
  
"There's just one thing I don't get," said Alan. "When I went to the future, I learned that Sue Ellen will die from AIDS in two years. And April's three years older than Sue Ellen."  
  
Seeing that Francine had become visibly nervous, Arthur tried to distract her with a question. "Francine, you know Sue Ellen better than the rest of us put together. What's your opinion?"  
  
Francine spoke with a quivering voice. "Er, well, Sue Ellen and April are alike in a lot of ways, but in some ways they're different."  
  
"Like what?" asked Arthur.  
  
The monkey girl quickly realized that she had no follow-up to her previous statement. Yet to avoid suspicion, she had to say something...  
  
"April does her hair differently," Francine blurted out. "She has hair puffs on the back of her head, but Sue Ellen had them on the sides."  
  
"That doesn't prove anything," said Fern incredulously.  
  
"Neither does the stuff you found out," Francine shot back.  
  
Before the others had a chance to remark on Francine's sudden sharpness, Fern proposed another theory. "Odette told me that April's parents are dead, and she's totally on her own. Maybe Sue Ellen's parents were killed somehow, and she came back in time to save them. They're always traveling to dangerous countries, after all."  
  
"That doesn't make sense," said Arthur, not noticing the expression of wide-eyed horror that had enveloped Francine's face. "If she wanted to warn her parents, why would she go back in time three whole years?"  
  
"Maybe time machines won't be invented for another three years," Alan suggested.  
  
At that moment the screen door flew open and April marched into the house, clutching a saxophone case in one hand. "I'm here," she announced with an eager grin. "Let's get started."  
  
The other kids, except for the terror-stricken Francine, jumped to their feet. "Hi, I'm Fern," the poodle girl introduced herself to April. "I used to sing with the quartet, but I took time off to do voice work for...Francine? Are you okay?"  
  
It was only then that everyone noticed Francine's struggle to hold back tears.  
  
"What's wrong, Francine?" Alan asked the girl.  
  
She didn't reply, but stepped slowly and determinedly toward April.  
  
"They're dead." Fear and sorrow mingled in her voice. "They were murdered. That's why you came back, isn't it? Isn't it, Sue Ellen?"  
  
The cat girl held her peace, but the others could tell she had been affected by the unexpected display of emotion.  
  
"Answer me!" Francine shouted at her.  
  
April nodded solemnly.  
  
Bursting into anguished sobs, Francine fled up the stairway and into Arthur's bedroom, where she closed the door. Arthur, Fern, and Alan hurried after her, while April nonchalantly rested her saxophone case on the floor.  
  
When he was halfway up the stairs, Arthur held out a hand to stop Alan and Fern. "Let me handle this. It's my bedroom."  
  
As the aardvark boy went on his way to console Francine, Fern and Alan descended the stairs and confronted April. "So it's true," said Alan accusingly. "You really are Sue Ellen."  
  
"And Francine was in on the secret all along," Fern added.  
  
April lowered her head. "It's complicated," she said quietly. "You must promise never to tell. The more it gets out, the greater the danger."  
  
"What danger?" asked Alan.  
  
"Are you afraid the people who killed your parents in the future will come after you?" Fern inquired.  
  
April didn't look up or say a word.  
  
Meanwhile, Arthur had taken a seat on the edge of his bed next to the bitterly weeping Francine. Uncertain if the girl's woes could be fixed by a simple arm around the shoulder, he kept his appendages to himself.  
  
"Do you want to talk about it, Francine?" he asked gently.  
  
The tearful monkey girl reached into her pocket, pulled out a handkerchief, and mopped her cheeks with it. "I'm sorry, Arthur," she choked out. "I try so hard to act like myself and not Sue Ellen, but she's a part of me, and I can't help it. I love her parents as much as I love my own."  
  
"There's nothing wrong with that," said Arthur, placing his hands over Francine's shoulders.  
  
"I can't tell you any more," the trembling Francine continued. "There are things about her parents you don't know...things you're not supposed to know."  
  
"Who would want to kill them?" Arthur asked innocently.  
  
"That's one of the things you're not supposed to know."  
  
Having said that, Francine leaned closer to Arthur and started to cry on his shoulder. It occurred to the boy that he had found himself in an identical situation many months before, only with Sue Ellen mourning the breakup of Carla and Mr. Ratburn. As he laid his arms across Francine's heaving back, he realized that he didn't feel the way he might expect to feel while holding his best female friend so close. Rather, an odd giddiness had filled him, not unlike the weird, pleasant sensation he had experienced while...  
  
He couldn't remember how his lips had ended up pressed against Francine's cheek. Yet there they were. Francine was surprised as well, and took a rest from weeping so she could gape at the boy.  
  
Pulling his face away, Arthur felt an unpleasant pang of separation, as if his lips were a natural outgrowth of Francine's face. He had no explanation for how he was feeling, except that it most likely had something to do with growing up, coming of age, taking an interest in girls...  
  
He wasn't sure if he had moved, or Francine had moved, or both, but his lips were now joined with hers, and they were getting wet. Her lips were smooth and rubbery, not fuzzy and gross like Sue Ellen's. He maintained lip contact for five full seconds.  
  
Francine backed away abruptly, confusion and joy both registering on her face. "Y-you kissed me," she marveled.  
  
"Yeah," said Arthur, astonished that he had not only endured the act, but enjoyed it.  
  
Francine grinned stupidly, and a salty tear dropped from her cheek into her mouth. "Kiss me again," she requested.  
  
And Arthur did so. They locked lips for more than ten seconds, gently pawing at each other's backs.  
  
Francine reluctantly leaned backwards. "I love you," she said sweetly.  
  
"I guess I love you too," Arthur replied. "Darn."  
  
TBC 


	12. Explanations

Arthur's piano, Francine's drums, Alan's cello, and April's saxophone lay dormant as the quartet members forgot about music for the moment, preferring to discuss the secret they had just learned about April.  
  
"If you have a plan to save your parents, I want to help," offered Francine, who sat next to Arthur on the couch.  
  
"I know you do," replied April. "And if I need your help, I'll ask for it."  
  
"You're living with Augusta now," Alan mentioned. "Is she your partner in whatever scheme you're hatching?"  
  
"I'd rather not answer any more questions," said April flatly.  
  
"When we first met, you said something important was about to happen," Francine recalled. "Then you left town just before the city was cleansed, and you came back right after it returned to normal."  
  
"It has something to do with Augusta being transformed and getting her powers," Alan hypothesized. "She tried to wipe out all the evil in the world once, and you want to help her try again. Is that it?"  
  
April didn't say a word, but her face manifested great discomfort.  
  
"But that makes no sense," Fern remarked to Alan. "Why would she need to get rid of all the world's evil just to save her parents? Why not just go back to the day before they were killed, and warn them of the danger?"  
  
"You're right, that doesn't make sense," Arthur chimed in. "Unless the whole world is trying to kill her parents."  
  
"Or maybe a part of the world," Fern suggested. "Like a hostile country."  
  
"Or some kind of secret spy organization," Alan tossed out.  
  
Suddenly Francine was looking as uncomfortable as April.  
  
"What I really want to know is why she didn't die of AIDS," said Alan, pretending as if April were elsewhere.  
  
"Maybe they found a cure," Arthur answered. "Or maybe she never had it to begin with."  
  
"Maybe she faked her death, then started calling herself April," Fern proposed.  
  
"I think we should drop the subject before we put ourselves in danger," Francine spoke up, but the others seemed to ignore her.  
  
"And another thing," Fern continued. "There are two Sue Ellens now--April, and the nine-year-old Sue Ellen who's supposed to be in Karjakistan, but isn't."  
  
"Yeah, where is she?" Arthur inquired of April. The cat girl only scowled at him.  
  
Alan turned to Francine. "You have Sue Ellen's memories. Do you know where the Armstrongs moved to?"  
  
"No, I don't," replied the anxious-looking Francine.  
  
"That's strange," remarked Fern. "Why would they move away without even telling Sue Ellen where they're going?"  
  
"Maybe they were running from something," said Arthur.  
  
"Or someone," added Alan. "Whoever killed Sue Ellen's parents in the future must have been hunting them for years."  
  
Fern shrugged. "But why? Who would want to hunt down and kill a diplomat and his family?"  
  
"Unless...he's not really a diplomat," suggested Arthur.  
  
April's eyes flashed with repressed anger. "This is pointless," she growled, rising to her feet. Arthur, Fern, Alan, and Francine watched as she plucked up her saxophone case and marched out of Arthur's house in a huff.  
  
Now all eyes were on the visibly distressed Francine.  
  
"You may as well tell us," said Alan with a menacing air. "Fern will figure it out eventually."  
  
"Thanks, Alan," said Fern, blushing.  
  
Finally Francine leaned forward as if to speak.  
  
"I'll tell Arthur," she said softly. "He's the only one I'll tell."  
  
Taken aback, Arthur followed Francine as they walked up the staircase and into the upstairs bathroom. Once inside, Francine closed the door and cranked the shower to full blast.  
  
Then she kissed Arthur again. And Arthur kissed back.  
  
"I can't believe I'm really in love with a girl," Arthur remarked. "This is so cool."  
  
"It's not so cool when the one you love doesn't return your feelings," Francine told him.  
  
"I'm sorry," Arthur answered meekly. "I guess I wasn't ready before."  
  
They gazed into each other's eyes for a few long seconds, then Francine took a deep breath.  
  
"I love you, Arthur," she said tenderly. "But if you ever tell another soul what I'm about to tell you, I'll kill you."  
  
Arthur grinned. The roaring water from the showerhead nearly drowned out Francine's words.  
  
"Sue Ellen's dad is a spy," she told the boy. "He works for the CIA. I don't know who exactly is after him, but it's some kind of enemy intelligence network. April knows more than I do, but she's not talking. And that's good, because the people who murdered my...Sue Ellen's parents in the future are utterly ruthless. If Sue Ellen hadn't changed her identity, they would've killed her too."  
  
By this time, Arthur's eyes had widened almost beyond the rims of his glasses.  
  
Meanwhile, Fern and Alan stood in the living room, discussing other facets of the situation with April.  
  
"You know a lot more about Augusta than I do," said Fern. "What powers does she have? What's she capable of?"  
  
"Back when Augusta was still Angus, and Dudley was still Dolly," Alan recounted, "we all went on a trip to Salem. Prunella and her mom were there, and Nadine and her mom. It turned out Angus was really an alchemist--sort of a scientist, but one who studies magic. He told us about something called the gift of the Wicasta. It's only passed down to girls, and they can use it to do magic and become witches. Dolly was the only one left with the gift--all the others were executed during the witch trials. Angus needed Dolly's help to create something called a Cleansing Stone, which could change the amount of good or evil in a person. He hoped to use it to make everyone good and create a perfect world. But Dolly stole it and drained the evil out of the whole city, except for me and Prunella."  
  
"So that's why we all started being nice to each other," Fern mused.  
  
"And that's when we realized that good and evil are subject to conservation laws," Alan went on. "In other words, you can move them or mix them up, but you can't create them or destroy them. The Cleansing Stone didn't work like Angus expected--it sucked all the evil out of the people of the city, and put it inside of Dolly, making her about a hundred thousand times more powerful and evil than she was before."  
  
Fern grimaced. "So that's how I ended up as half of a two-headed person with Buster."  
  
"Prunella managed to destroy the Cleansing Stone before Dolly could use it on the rest of the world," Alan proceeded. "If she hadn't, Dolly would have become unstoppable. So Dolly wanted to capture Angus and force him to create a new stone. When she finally caught him, she turned him into Augusta and gave her the Wicasta gift so that she could create the stone without Dolly's help."  
  
"I remember that part."  
  
"So do I," Alan continued. "I thought it was the end of everything, but Prunella had one last trick up her sleeve. She tricked Dolly into trying to turn her into a boy, but she deflected the spell with a magic mirror, and Dolly turned into Dudley. Since boys can't possess the Wicasta gift, he was no longer a threat."  
  
"And what about Augusta?"  
  
"I'm getting to that. Angus was one of the greatest alchemists ever. He knew pretty much everything. Augusta has all that knowledge, and witch powers to boot. She can control good and evil just by thinking. If she decides to take over the world, nobody will be able to stop her."  
  
"Why not?"  
  
Alan thought for a second, then asked, "Do you remember how you felt when you were cleansed?"  
  
"Yes," Fern answered. "I was happy all the time. I didn't want to hurt anybody."  
  
"Now," Alan went on, "suppose the police, or the army, tried to capture Augusta. She would use her powers to cleanse them, and they would feel happy and not want to hurt her. Meanwhile, all their evil would go into her, and make her more powerful."  
  
Fern became lost in thought, pondering what Alan had told her.  
  
"Then we'd better pray she's on our side," she finally said.  
  
At that moment the upstairs bathroom door opened, and Arthur and Francine descended the stairway, gazing at each other affectionately and mysteriously.  
  
"Out with it, Arthur," said Alan when the two had reached the first floor. "What did she tell you?"  
  
"Trust me," came Arthur's reply, "you don't want to know."  
  
As Alan stared at the silent, grinning Francine, a memory from the previous year struggled to resurface. Despite its vagueness, he somehow felt that it would explain the riddle at hand. He stared at Francine some more.  
  
Then it hit him.  
  
"Francine will become a master spy called The Wraith."  
  
When Jason, his son from thirty years in the future, had revealed this to him, he hadn't understood it. Francine, a spy? Why not a professional soccer player, or a sanitation engineer like her father? What would attract a girl like her to the field of espionage?  
  
It was all clear now...  
  
"I trust you didn't hear anything," said Francine to Alan and Fern.  
  
"Of course we didn't," replied Alan knowingly. "You don't think we would...spy...on you, do you?"  
  
Francine's jaw plummeted.  
  
Arthur gritted his teeth.  
  
Fern wondered what was going on.  
  
The monkey girl's expression morphed into one of defeat.  
  
"Okay, Alan," she muttered. "Your turn in the bathroom."  
  
TBC 


	13. Ultimatum

The next morning, Arthur and Francine went to Reverend Fulsome's congregation together. The Reads, the Coopers, and many other neighborhood families were gathered in the chapel, awaiting an inspiring sermon.  
  
While Arthur and Francine held hands and exchanged small talk, Mrs. Read struggled to calm the squirming Baby Kate in her lap. Across the aisle from them, the Coopers and their six children occupied an entire pew plus a wheelchair. Odette's neck had recently spurted to twenty inches, making her the most conspicuous landmark in the crowd of parishioners.  
  
"I'm surprised your parents would let you come to my church, being Jewish and all," Arthur remarked to Francine.  
  
"I've been more open-minded about religion since Sue Ellen got stuck in my head," Francine answered. "And my parents don't care if I go to church with my friends, as long as I go to temple as well."  
  
Finally the reverend took his stand behind the pulpit. "I have chosen for my topic, 'Where is God when I'm suffering?'" the rabbit man announced.  
  
"Not again," Arthur heard his father grumble.  
  
----  
  
In the mid-afternoon of the same day, April responded to a call from Fern, requesting a meeting between the two girls in a secluded thicket near the creek. When the cat girl arrived at the location, she was surprised to find not only Fern present, but Alan as well.  
  
"What's this about?" she asked the pair.  
  
"We have an ultimatum for you," replied Fern.  
  
"We know your secret now," Alan added. "Your father's really a CIA agent."  
  
The twelve-year-old cat girl's mouth fell open.  
  
"You came back in time to save your parents," said Fern. "What we want to know is how you intend to do that, and why you need Augusta's help."  
  
April bit her lip with determination. "It's in your best interests if you don't know," she said with finality.  
  
"Let me put it another way," Fern continued. "Either tell us what you and Augusta are planning, or by this time next week, everyone in Elwood City will know who you are and what your dad does for a living."  
  
Both anger and helplessness were visible in April's eyes.  
  
"You don't understand," she said with a hint of a snarl. "Some very dangerous people are after my parents, and if they can get to them by killing me, they will."  
  
"Augusta's dangerous too," came Alan's response. "She almost destroyed the world when she was a man, and now she's even more powerful."  
  
"You don't know her like I do," said April defensively. "She only wants to make the world a better place."  
  
"How?" snapped Alan. "By sucking out all the evil? Where will she put it?"  
  
The sullen-faced April didn't answer.  
  
"Wait a minute," Fern chimed in. "How well do you know Augusta? Did you know her in the future?"  
  
The poodle girl's question was met with silence.  
  
"I have access to the school's web site," Fern threatened. "And I've already written an article for the kids' section of the local paper."  
  
"She's hardcore," Alan told April.  
  
Without a word of reply, April turned on her heel and walked away from the thicket, not looking back.  
  
By the time she reached Augusta's apartment, she still hadn't looked back. The rabbit woman was laboring over a bunsen burner which she had installed in a new metal desk. A vial containing a light blue mixture bubbled over the flame.  
  
"Augusta, we have a problem," April reported.  
  
"What kind of problem?" Augusta lowered the burner's heat setting and turned around.  
  
"Fern and Alan know about me and my dad," April answered. "They say they'll tell everybody, unless I reveal our plans to them."  
  
Augusta sat down on the desk chair and rested her chin in her hands. "This isn't good at all," she remarked. "I should talk to them myself."  
  
"We can't let the whole city learn my secret," said April with urgency in her voice. "If this doesn't straighten itself out, we may have to go directly to...Plan Z."  
  
A chill passed through the room.  
  
Augusta shook her head. "Too drastic. Plus we haven't found the time reverser yet."  
  
"How long would it take you to create a new one?" April asked her.  
  
"I don't know. How long did it take my future self to create the first?"  
  
"Six months."  
  
Augusta sighed. "Then, seeing that my future self is twice as good as I am at everything, I would have to say a year."  
  
----  
  
Sunday evening arrived, and Fern's parents were enjoying a peaceful evening in front of the TV. As a Hercule Poulet murder mystery played on the screen, they heard a ring at the doorbell. Thinking it might be Fern, Mrs. Walters rushed to the door and looked through the peephole.  
  
"Who is it, dear?" Mr. Walters asked her.  
  
"It's some big-eared lady," was her answer.  
  
The blond rabbit woman in the checkered dress started to speak as Mrs. Walters opened the door. "My name's Augusta Winslow. Is your daughter Fern at home?"  
  
"No, she isn't," Mrs. Walters replied, feeling a pang of concern that a total stranger was inquiring about Fern. "She's spending the night at a friend's house."  
  
"Which friend?" asked Augusta.  
  
"I don't know. She didn't say."  
  
Augusta waved her hand at Mrs. Walters' face. "I'll ask you once again," she said firmly, "where is Fern?"  
  
"I told you, I don't know," said the poodle woman.  
  
Consternated by the failure of her truth spell, Augusta turned and walked away from the house, deep in disturbed thought.  
  
A few hours later, Fern was tucked into a guest bed by Sarah McGrady. She found the room much to her liking, with paintings and blues posters adorning the walls.  
  
"Thanks for letting me stay the night here, Mrs. McGrady," she said with a sleepy smile.  
  
"No problem," the woman responded. "Anything to finally get a line of dialogue in this series."  
  
She turned out the lights, and Fern lapsed into slumber, dreaming about the cybernetic havoc she would wreak the following morning.  
  
----  
  
Monday morning arrived too quickly for many...particularly April Murphy.  
  
Class sessions were about to begin at Bainbridge Middle School, and April was wandering the hallways with her best friend, Odette the swan.  
  
"Thanks for sticking your neck out for me, Odette," said April.  
  
As the two seventh-graders walked past the opened entrance to the computer lab, April saw something very troubling out of the corner of her eye. "Oh, no," she muttered, rushing into the lab with Odette in tow.  
  
One of the monitors was displaying a news story from the middle school's web page. The headline bore the message, APRIL MURPHY AND SUE ELLEN ARMSTRONG--THE SAME PERSON? Below it appeared front and side view pictures of April and Sue Ellen. A subheading read, HANK ARMSTRONG--DIPLOMAT OR SPY?  
  
April fumed so hard that Odette could almost see wisps of smoke rising from her head. "It's just a harmless joke," said the swan girl. "Don't let it get to you."  
  
But it was too late--April's temper had reached the critical point. She had expected Fern to post such a story on the Lakewood Elementary web site, where only Sue Ellen's friends would find it meaningful. But this...this was going too far...  
  
TBC 


	14. Sweet Talking Dudley

Fern and Alan arrived together at the elementary school the next morning, and hurried to the computer lab to observe the reactions of the other kids to the new entry in the school's web site. They were mixed, ranging from blank-faced incredulity (Beat) to boiling rage (Francine).  
  
"You did this!" the furious monkey girl bellowed at Fern, as Arthur tried to hold her back with a hand over her shoulder. "You're the only one with the skills! How could you do this to me?"  
  
"Calm down, Francine," said Alan, approaching her slowly. "You want to know what April and Augusta are up to as much as we do."  
  
"You endangered my parents!" shrieked Francine.  
  
"We had to show April we weren't bluffing," Fern explained.  
  
"Augusta tried to find us last night," Alan related to Francine. "She came to both our houses. I spent the night at Marina's, and Fern spent it at Mrs. McGrady's. We didn't tell our parents where we were, in case Augusta used her truth spells on them."  
  
"If she'd found us, she would have hypnotized us and made us forget," Fern added. "Now the whole school knows."  
  
"But April knows where my...where Sue Ellen's parents are," answered Francine, sounding a little less angry. "What if enemy spies kidnap her and torture the information out of her?"  
  
"With Augusta protecting her?" came Alan's snide reply. "Not likely."  
  
Francine glared indignantly at the boy. "You promised you wouldn't tell anyone," she complained.  
  
Alan shook his head. "I didn't promise anything."  
  
"Neither did I," Fern interjected.  
  
"Well, you could have at least talked to me about this first," Francine groused.  
  
Word of the strange new story on the school web site spread quickly, and the computer lab was swamped with curious students. Mr. Wald noticed with concern that four of his pupils--Binky, Mavis, George, and Muffy--were absent at the appointed time to begin his lesson. "Is everyone sick?" he asked the kids who were present. "Is it the carrot juice virus all over again?"  
  
A few moments later Muffy and George entered the classroom, engaged in a debate over what they had read. "It's pure drivel," insisted Muffy. "It paints Augusta as some sort of wicked witch."  
  
"But the fact that Sue Ellen's dad is a spy explains a lot," said George.  
  
"What's this?" inquired Mr. Wald as the two kids sat behind their desks. "Sue Ellen's father is a spy?"  
  
"Yeah, haven't you seen the school web site?" replied Van. Two desks away from him, Francine scowled miserably.  
  
"It's just a silly conspiracy theory," Beat grumbled. "Someone's trying to explain why Sue Ellen moved away suddenly and an older girl showed up who looks just like her."  
  
As Mr. Wald picked up a slab of chalk, Binky and Mavis walked in. "Are you also late because you were reading the school web site?" he asked them.  
  
"No, Mr. Wald," replied Mavis, who was clutching a short stack of papers. "We're late because we were making copies of our new Spongebrain cartoon."  
  
"But everybody's so excited about the Sue Ellen story," added Binky, "that we'll wait until the end of the day to hand it out."  
  
Soon everyone was in their seats, and a lecture on prepositions followed.  
  
By the time morning recess arrived, some of the kids who hadn't taken an interest in April Murphy's secret identity had convinced Binky and Mavis to give them advance copies of Spongebrain Smartypants Issue 2. As for Arthur and Francine, they were only interested in each other.  
  
They held hands on a playground bench, kissing only when asked to do so by a curious passerby. Before long several of their friends had gathered around to watch the show.  
  
"I'm happy for you, Frankie," Beat told the girl. "You finally have the boyfriend you always wanted. I guess you're normal after all."  
  
"Someday you'll find one, Beat," said Francine after drawing her lips away from Arthur's face.  
  
"We shall see," Beat replied. As she strolled away from the scene, a pained expression appeared on her face.  
  
Then Muffy spoke to the lovers. "This is what happens when you follow my romantic advice," she boasted.  
  
"You never gave us any romantic advice," said Arthur.  
  
"Exactly," replied Muffy. "As you can see, the best advice to give in your case was no advice at all."  
  
"It's hard to believe you're moving out of your mansion, after all the years you lived in it," Francine remarked.  
  
"I'll miss the old girl," Muffy sighed. "But one good thing will come out of it. My friend Augusta will get her first major account."  
  
In another part of the city, Ed and Millicent Crosswire were seated on the opposite side of a desk from real estate agent Augusta Winslow. On this important occasion the rabbit woman wore a turquiose embroidered dress which she had picked on her own without help from Muffy or Maria.  
  
"I'm sure you're very talented," Mr. Crosswire said to her, "and our daughter highly recommends you, but given the circumstances, we would prefer to go with someone who has more experience with negotiation."  
  
"No, you wouldn't," said Augusta, subtly waving her fingers at the pair.  
  
"No, we wouldn't," repeated Mr. Crosswire.  
  
"I'll do just fine," said Augusta.  
  
"You'll do just fine," intoned Mrs. Crosswire.  
  
Back at the Lakewood playground, George and Sal were enjoying themselves on the swings when they saw Dudley approach them. They stuck out their feet to ground themselves, certain that trouble was brewing.  
  
"What do you want, Dudley?" asked George anxiously.  
  
"He's gonna use his magic powers to turn us into snakes, then squish us," Sal speculated.  
  
"I don't have magic powers anymore," said Dudley.  
  
For a few seconds George and Sal stared at Dudley, who stared back.  
  
"Mrs. Powers grounded me for the entire weekend," Dudley spoke up. "I had plenty of time to think. You know that I've been through a lot. All my female relatives were executed, my father abandoned me, I was thrown three hundred years into the future, I became evil and made people suffer, I turned into a boy, and I lost my powers. I have nothing left--nothing but two foster parents who take good care of me, in spite of all the bad things I've done. I don't want to lose that." He breathed deeply and sadly. "I'm sorry for killing a snake in front of you, Sal. I'm sorry for punching you, George."  
  
George and Sal fell silent as Dudley's apology sank in. Then, all of a sudden, Molly and Rattles appeared behind the rat boy.  
  
"Hey, Dudley, let's see you give George another black eye," Molly goaded him.  
  
Dudley turned and regarded the two bullies dispassionately. "I have decided that I don't want to embrace the life of a troublemaker after all," he announced. "However, I would like to maintain our friendship. I believe we have much in common, and would all benefit from mutual association."  
  
Rattles made a choked-up expression. "There's a weird feeling in my stomach," he told Molly.  
  
"Is it the warm fuzzy feeling you get when someone expresses genuine concern for your welfare for no other reason except that you're a fellow human being?" asked Molly earnestly.  
  
"No, just gas." Rattles glared menacingly at Dudley. "If you're not with us, you're against us. See you after detention, wimp."  
  
The tough boy walked off, but Molly remained behind, apparently touched and baffled by Dudley's sentiments.  
  
"There's no reason for you to go on looking like a tramp, Molly," the boy continued. "With a decent wardrobe and better grooming, you have the potential to become a truly beautiful girl. I've always wondered what your eyes look like behind all that bushy hair. Do you hide them to avoid making the other girls jealous?"  
  
Overwhelmed by Dudley's kind and flattering words, the rabbit girl grinned sweetly and clasped her hands over her heart.  
  
George glanced down at his Bionic Bunny watch. "Hey, it's time for class."  
  
"See you later, Molly," said Dudley, waving. "Think about what I said."  
  
As he headed toward the school building in the company of George and Sal, Molly chased after him, crying out, "Dudley, wait! Come back!"  
  
TBC 


	15. Don't Eat the Flan

Molly doggedly pursued Dudley for the remainder of the school day, much to his chagrin. At the beginning of afternoon recess, he had scarcely set foot in the playground when the rabbit girl scurried up to him--but this time something had changed about her.  
  
"I cut my hair during lunch hour," said Molly, whose hazel peepers were now visible. "How do you like it?"  
  
"It, er, looks fantastic," replied Dudley, although the startling absence of the girl's frontal hair mop tempted him to say, "What did you use, a butter knife?"  
  
"And as soon as school's over, I'm gonna ask my mom to buy me a new pair of jeans," Molly enthused.  
  
"That's just...fantastic," Dudley strained to say. Noticing that Muffy was walking by, he called out to her. "Hey, Muffy!"  
  
The finely dressed monkey girl balked upon seeing Dudley and Molly together, remembering the previous week's incident that had left George with a black eye.  
  
"Molly, you know Muffy," said Dudley, gesturing toward her. "She's my...she's my girlfriend."  
  
"I'm not..." the stunned Muffy started to say.  
  
"...ready for the equivalency test, I know," Dudley interrupted her. "But we still have the rest of the month to study."  
  
"You didn't tell me you had a girlfriend," Molly said to Dudley in a wounded tone of voice.  
  
"You didn't ask," was Dudley's response.  
  
"I would've asked if you'd told me," Molly rejoined.  
  
Then Dudley took Muffy by the arm and walked away with her, leaving Molly to sulk in disappointment.  
  
Once they were out of the tough girl's sight, Muffy turned to Dudley and asked, "Why are you pretending I'm your girlfriend?"  
  
"I'm just trying to get Molly off my back," replied Dudley, releasing her arm. "I think killing a snake would only make her like me more."  
  
A realization struck Muffy. "Wait...are you going to take the equivalency test too?"  
  
Dudley nodded. "I arranged it with Mr. Wald today. Since I have no academic records, I have to take it so the school can assign me to a grade level. I expect the history part will be a challenge, but the rest should be easy."  
  
"It's all a challenge for me," said Muffy glumly. "You weren't around when it happened, but I spent half the year in a private school where I didn't learn a thing, and then I ran away for three weeks. I'll have to study my butt off all month just to get a passing grade."  
  
"Don't do that," said Dudley, shaking his head. "You'll need your butt if you want to be a fashion model."  
  
Muffy chuckled. "It's a figure of speech, silly." Then an idea hit her. "Why don't we study for the test together?"  
  
"That's an excellent idea!" exclaimed Dudley. "I'll meet you after school. I mean, after I sit my butt off in detention hall."  
  
----  
  
As they agreed to do, Muffy and Dudley walked to the Crosswire mansion after school let out. A dismayed look appeared on Muffy's face as they passed by the large FOR SALE sign posted in the front yard.  
  
"I grew up in a cottage," Dudley related. "I don't know how it feels to move from a mansion into a smaller place."  
  
"That's okay," replied Muffy.  
  
They rang the bell next to the ornate pine doors, and to their surprise, they were greeted by Muffy's mother, not a servant. "Come in, kids," Mrs. Crosswire welcomed them.  
  
They stepped into the palacial house and glanced around. While Muffy noticed missing paintings and pieces of furniture that had already been packed for moving, Dudley thrilled at the extravagance of what remained.  
  
"I guess you're running the house now," said Muffy to her mother.  
  
"That's right," answered Mrs. Crosswire, who was cradling baby Tyson in her arms. "All the servants left today. It's sad, because most of them don't have other jobs lined up."  
  
Dudley ran his fingers over the wooden railing of the spiral staircase leading to Muffy's bedroom. "This house is fabulous," he marveled. "I could live my butt off in here."  
  
Mrs. Crosswire scowled with displeasure. "Where did you learn to talk like that, young man?"  
  
"He, uh, picked it up from the bullies at school," Muffy explained.  
  
Mrs. Crosswire motioned for the kids to follow her. "Come into the kitchen. I've made a treat."  
  
Muffy couldn't believe her ears. "You...cooked something?"  
  
When she and Dudley arrived in the kitchen, they found a strange-looking brown mass waiting for them on a serving plate. "It's a caramel flan," her mother told them. "Help yourselves."  
  
Eager to sample the homemade delicacy, Muffy and Dudley grabbed small plates and doled themselves portions using a serving spoon. They took their first bites at the same time...and their taste buds revolted. "Ewww!"  
  
"What do you think?" Mrs. Crosswire asked the two grimacing children.  
  
"It's...great, Mom," Muffy choked out.  
  
"Quite tasty," Dudley lied.  
  
"Could use a little less baking soda," Muffy added.  
  
While Mrs. Crosswire departed for baby Tyson's room, Dudley used his fork to sweep the leftover flan into the waste basket. "I feel like puking my butt off," he whispered to Muffy.  
  
"Dudley, about that figure of speech..." Muffy started to say.  
  
"Muffy, your friend is welcome to stay for dinner," called her mother from the baby's room.  
  
"What are you preparing?" Dudley asked.  
  
"I haven't decided," came Mrs. Crosswire's voice.  
  
"How about oatmeal?" Muffy suggested.  
  
----  
  
"Arthur Timothy Read, do you take Francine Alice Frensky to be your awfully wedded wife?" asked D.W.'s cowgirl doll, which was doubling as a minister.  
  
"Yes, I do," said a troll doll who stood in for Arthur.  
  
While D.W. simulated Arthur and Francine's wedding in her bedroom, the two lovebirds were holding hands and watching a Bunny League episode in the living room.  
  
"My favorite is Amazon Bunny," said Francine. "She's so exotic and beautiful."  
  
"And stuck-up," Arthur responded. "She thinks she's better than the others, like some kind of princess. She reminds me of Muffy." Francine scowled at him. "Uh, before she stopped being that way."  
  
On the TV screen, the League was locked in battle with a supervillainess named Hydra, who split in two every time they attacked her. They soon found themselves surrounded by dozens of Hydra duplicates, and were forced to withdraw.  
  
"Who's your favorite?" Francine asked.  
  
Arthur grinned proudly. "No one will ever compare to Bionic Bunny."  
  
A commercial followed, and Francine used the opportunity to give Arthur repeated pecks on the lips. Mr. Read walked past the couch as they kissed, muttering, "I wonder what Sue Ellen would think."  
  
"I have no problem with it," said Francine with a smirk.  
  
Finding the commercial break to be quite unfulfilling, she began to muse on the situation of Sue Ellen's family. "I'll bet they changed their names after they moved. If that's true, then what Fern and Alan did shouldn't put them in any danger. If it's not true, then what's to stop their new neighbors from bringing up our school web page and learning the truth?"  
  
Arthur's expression became thoughtful. "I wonder if Sue Ellen is her real name. Maybe she was called something else before she moved to Elwood City."  
  
"No, she's been Sue Ellen since the day she was born," replied Francine. "But notice I haven't said anything about her last name."  
  
----  
  
Throughout the afternoon and early evening, April was besieged by students from both Lakewood Elementary and Bainbridge Middle School, wanting to know if the allegations published on the school web sites were true. Certain that being unavailable for comment would only heighten their suspicions, April fielded all of their inquiries, as much as she hated to do so.  
  
"They won't leave me alone," she groused. Augusta, who was once again mixing ingredients in a bubbling vial, nodded sympathetically. "I'm afraid Fern and Alan will make good on their threat, and then the whole city will be knocking down our door."  
  
"Here's an idea," Augusta proposed. "I could use a charm to erase your memory of where the Armstrongs moved to. Then, if enemy agents capture you, they won't get any information they can use."  
  
April smirked sarcastically. "And you say Plan Z is drastic."  
  
A knocking was heard. April reluctantly shuffled to the door, wondering which of her old and new friends had come to waste her time.  
  
It turned out to be George. The moose boy had seen April a few times in passing, so he wasn't bowled over by the girl's resemblance to Sue Ellen.  
  
"Come in, George," said April with a clear lack of enthusiasm.  
  
"Uh, hi, April," he greeted the cat girl. "I just wanted to stop by and tell you that I read all the stuff on the school's web site about you, and I don't believe any of it."  
  
Augusta whirled, smelling the unmistakable odor of beating around the bush. "That's not why you came," she said suspiciously, walking toward George and waving her fingers.  
  
The boy felt a strange compulsion to be honest about his intentions. "Okay, it's not," he admitted. "I want to find out more about Dr. Portinari, because I have reason to believe he's from another planet." When he realized what he had said, he slapped his forehead and groaned dejectedly.  
  
"Same old George," April chuckled. When she saw Augusta's concerned expression, she added, "George thinks everyone's an alien. He even thought I was an alien once. It's something he picked up from Buster."  
  
"Please don't tell Dr. Portinari what I just said," George pleaded.  
  
Smiling, Augusta reached out and rubbed George's stubbled scalp. "I won't," she agreed. "You're just a regular kid with an active imagination. You see someone who's new in town and a little strange, and you think aliens have landed. That's a good thing. When the invasion finally does come, it's people like you who will save us all."  
  
"You shouldn't encourage him," April protested.  
  
Augusta seemed not to hear her words. "Rick says he likes kids," she told George. "When I meet with him on Saturday, you can come along. Just tell him that you want to be a psychiatrist when you grow up."  
  
"Cool," said George excitedly. "Thanks, Miss Winslow."  
  
Augusta groaned quietly as she watched the boy hurry out of the apartment. She had grown to enjoy wearing dresses, but being called Miss Winslow was still painful to her ears.  
  
"I don't think taking George along is a good idea," April warned her.  
  
"It can't hurt," Augusta replied. "And who knows? Rick may turn out to be an alien after all."  
  
TBC 


	16. New Snob on the Block

It was a warm, cloudless Saturday morning, and April Murphy was sunning herself on a beach chair atop the Westboro apartment building. She wore a green one-piece bathing suit, having given up two-piece suits out of concern that acquaintances with more curiosity than discretion would see her scars and inquire about them.  
  
Her rest was interrupted when Francine burst through the roof access door, holding a newspaper page in one hand. "April, you've gotta see this," the younger girl exclaimed with some urgency.  
  
Sitting up, April took the paper in her hands and peered at it through her dark sunglasses. It was from the Saturday issue of the Elwood Times, and contained the weekly kid's section. Halfway down the page was a story entitled, MY FRIEND IS A TIME TRAVELER, illustrated with the same front and side pictures of herself and Sue Ellen that she had seen in her school's web site. The author's name was given as May Wayne--the concatenation of Fern and Alan's middle names.  
  
She growled under her breath as she read the story, whose fluid prose suggested that Fern had written it. When she finished, something struck her as odd. "She didn't say anything about the CIA," she remarked.  
  
"I doubt the paper would've published it if she had," Francine observed.  
  
April sighed bitterly. "They're just nine-year-olds," she remarked. "I wonder if they even understand the seriousness of what they're doing."  
  
"Do you really think enemy agents could be in Elwood City looking for you?" asked Francine with a hint of worry.  
  
April pulled off her sunglasses, revealing a pair of sober eyes. "There's something I haven't told you. The reason why we had to move away from here so suddenly...it was because Dad found a listening device in my bedroom."  
  
To her surprise, Francine started to laugh.  
  
"This isn't funny!" April barked.  
  
After snickering for a few seconds, Francine regained her composure. "There's something I haven't told you," she confessed. "There was a listening device in my bedroom too. Beat planted them so she could monitor the body-switching experiment."  
  
Startled, April could only stammer incredulously.  
  
"It wasn't her fault," Francine continued. "The device she used to switch us is called the Opticron. It was invented by Mr. Putnam, who ran Uppity Downs Academy before he died. He used it to copy his knowledge and memories into Beat and Mavis. Then they tried switching our bodies with it, but it didn't work correctly. Right after you moved away, all my memories of being Francine came back, and I had two personalities in my head."  
  
"The same thing happened to me," April acknowledged. "But I've learned to live with it." She replaced her sunglasses over her eyes and stared thoughtfully at the newspaper section in her hands. "Hmm...I never would've suspected Beat..."  
  
"Beat and Mavis are normal now," Francine went on. "They erased Mr. Putnam from their brains."  
  
April nodded at her. "Thanks for showing me this."  
  
After Francine left the roof, the cat girl lay in her chair for a while, pondering what she had just heard and read. Perhaps the danger wasn't as great as she had feared--yet she couldn't afford to let down her guard. She had considered a certain method of self-protection and dismissed it as too extreme, but perhaps it was time to revisit it, at least to gauge its feasibility.  
  
She returned to the apartment she shared with Augusta, and pulled from the desk compartment a scarlet-colored stone. Grasping it in her palm, she closed her eyes, concentrated...and disappeared. Her body was now invisible, even to her own view.  
  
She had never employed the invisibility stone for more than half an hour at a time, even when sneaking into Los Cactos to steal the crystal. She hadn't bothered to obtain detailed specifications from the future Augusta, so she had no way of knowing how long the stone's magic would last if used constantly. On top of that, the present Augusta might grow suspicious if she found it missing from the desk. The only way to know was to try it out...  
  
The door to the apartment seemed to open and close on its own as the transparent girl passed through it.  
  
She wandered directionlessly about the neighborhood for a full hour, satisfied to observe that the stone in her fist had kept her invisible the entire time. Noticing something curious, she hurried toward Muffy's mansion, where a van was removing the last of the Crosswire possessions--and the For Sale sign had been taken down.  
  
Augusta had proudly mentioned the fact that she had sold the mansion, but April had learned nothing about the buyers from her. She guessed they were the elegantly dressed aardvark couple who stood in the front yard conversing with Ed and Millicent Crosswire. A little girl with braided orange hair and a red silk dress was with them, apparently their daughter. None of them noticed April as she slowly walked closer.  
  
"There's a downside to suddenly being rich," said the aardvark woman. "Now everybody thinks we're the owners of that perfume company."  
  
Mrs. Crosswire chuckled. "I suppose you wish you were."  
  
Muffy herself appeared a few times in her usual dress, carting her boxed porcelain dolls to the limousine. April watched as the aardvark girl approached her, wearing a haughty smirk.  
  
"Why are you carrying those boxes by yourself?" she asked Muffy.  
  
"I don't feel safe putting my dolls in the truck," Muffy replied, tightening her grip on the two boxes in her arms.  
  
The aardvark girl leaned over for a closer look. "Oh, there are dolls in the boxes? I didn't notice. You're right, they don't belong in the truck. They'd be out of place in the middle of all those beautiful furniture pads."  
  
Scowling, Muffy turned away from the girl and marched toward the limo. "Your dolls look like they rolled off an assembly line," she heard the girl taunt. "I own a handcrafted porcelain doll from Belgium. It's worth twice as much as all your dolls put together."  
  
April was sure she didn't like this new girl, and tried to imagine a way to prank her without being noticed. Just as she was formulating a plan that involved the exposed zipper in the back of the girl's dress, she heard the voices of children drawing nearer. Turning on her invisible heel, she saw a multitude of Muffy's friends--Arthur, Prunella, Alan, Fern, George, Francine, Binky, and Mavis--who had arrived to offer their best wishes. April knew it would be very bad if Fern and Alan saw her while she was invisible, so she backed away to the side of the mansion.  
  
Fern was the first to notice the new girl's presence. While the other kids swarmed around Muffy, she cautiously walked up to the aardvark girl and gaped at her somehow familiar face. "Don't stare," the girl admonished her. "It's rude."  
  
Then it all came back to Fern. "Oh...my...gosh," she said unbelievingly. "Mickie Chanel."  
  
"I'm surprised you remembered my name," was the girl's belittling response.  
  
"It was you who told me to remember it," said Fern. "You said it would be in lights someday."  
  
"And it will be," said Mickie Chanel proudly. "I remember you, but I don't remember your name. I only remember things that are important."  
  
"Fine," replied Fern with a scowl. "If it's not important to you, I won't tell you what it is."  
  
At that moment Prunella strolled up to her and asked, "Do you know this girl, Fern?"  
  
Mickie snapped her fingers. "Fern! That's it."  
  
Deciding that the snobbish girl was worthy only of being referred to in the third person, Fern turned to Prunella. "Yes, I know her. We competed for the Mini Moo role. She has a beautiful voice--as long as she's singing and not talking."  
  
"Prunella Prufrock," the rat girl introduced herself, extending a hand to Mickie, who shook it hesitatingly.  
  
"Mickie's about your age, I think," Fern told Prunella. "Maybe she'll go to your class."  
  
"If she goes to a public school at all," said Prunella.  
  
"Sadly, I will," Mickie chimed in. "I used to have a private tutor, but my parents think my social skills will improve if I attend a public school. As if my social skills need improvement."  
  
While Prunella briefed Mickie on the joys of fifth grade at Lakewood Elementary, Fern let her gaze wander to the front wall of the house, where she saw a pair of shoe-shaped indentations in the grass. It appeared as if someone very heavy had stood in the spot for a long time--and quite recently, as the flattened blades of grass were still green.  
  
She looked back at Mickie and Prunella for a few seconds, then scanned for the indentations again. They were gone...  
  
TBC 


	17. Saturday in the Park with George

While the rest of the gang helped Muffy to settle into her condo, George joined Augusta and went to a nearby park to meet with Dr. Portinari. The bulldog man was delighted to see them approach his bench, and he jumped up eagerly. 

"Rick, this is George Nordgren," Augusta introduced the boy. "He's interested in psychiatry. George, this is Dr. Rick Portinari." Feeling rather bashful, George reached up and cautiously shook the man's hand. Both he and Augusta were wearing shorts and casual shirts for the spring weather.

"What do you know about psychiatry, George?" asked Portinari as the moose boy seated himself on the bench between the two adults.

"Um, a psychiatrist is a doctor who helps crazy people," replied George.

Portinari chuckled. "That's a common misconception. Not everyone who sees a psychiatrist is crazy. I've had only a few patients whom I would describe as crazy. Most of my patients are normal people who happen to have problems."

"Tell me about the crazy ones," George urged him.

"Hmm...okay," said Portinari with a hint of impatience. "There was one fellow who had four different personalities, and they were The Beatles." George started to laugh. "And a woman who claimed to be a 2,000-year-old vampire. And a man who couldn't look at a sneeze shield without sneezing. Well, he was more obsessive-compulsive than crazy. And a woman who was convinced that our world was really a cartoon show on TV. And a man who thought he was surrounded by space aliens disguised as humans." George suddenly stopped laughing. "But I should warn you--if you become a psychiatrist, you won't meet very many people like that. But that's good, because a lot of those people can't be helped, and have to be institutionalized."

"You mean locked up in the looney bin?"

Portinari grinned, grabbed one of George's antlers, and wiggled it. "Yes, that's what I mean. But the whole purpose of psychiatry is to avoid having to do that to people."

"Hmm..." George mused disappointedly.

"Do you still want to be a psychiatrist?" Portinari asked him.

"I'll think about it," replied George in a noncommital tone. "I gotta go now."

As he watched the moose boy jog away through the trees, Portinari smiled with satisfaction. "Yet another child cured of romantic notions about psychiatry," he remarked just before Augusta leaped on him.

George ran all the way to his house, his mouth hanging open. He had never before imagined that a grownup who believed in alien invaders might be committed to an institution. He had to call Buster and tell him that Portinari was all right, that the rabbit boy's insistence on having seen aliens would put him in danger...

In the park, Augusta and Portinari were embracing and kissing as if the end of the world were at hand. Augusta knew she would never go back to her previous existence now, were it possible or not. It was becoming obvious to her that the magical gift allowed her to experience love on a more profound level than other women. She was in paradise.

For what seemed like hours they alternated between rapturous passion and brief conversations, in the course of which they seemed to understand each other perfectly and effortlessly. The surrounding rows of trees made it difficult for passers-by to spy on them--except for one.

Still invisible through the aid of the stone in her palm, April stopped only a moment to watch the display of affection. It deeply troubled her. She wandered away, struggling to make sense of this development.

_This shouldn't be happening_, she thought while walking unseen along the sidewalk. _Future Augusta told me all about her love life, and how she never felt right, and how the good men rejected her because of what she was. And now Dr. Portinari falls out of the blue, and they're perfect for each other. I know I've changed her future by coming back in time, but this just doesn't..._

Her train of thought was abruptly cut off when a dark green Volvo, its driver seeing right through her, rolled down the residential driveway in which she stood. She had no time to jump out of its path...

----

The furnishings in the Crosswires' new condominium were few and modest; their more lavish possessions--statues, paintings, huge-screen TVs, Muffy's miniature yet operational replica of the Titanic--had either been sold, or were in storage. But her friends didn't seem to care, as what remained easily matched their own houses for comfort and leisure.

George had reunited with the group after trying unsuccessfully to reach Buster in Chicago and leaving a message on his voice mail. Now he was enjoying snacks provided by Mrs. Crosswire (from the supermarket, by Muffy's insistence) along with Arthur, Prunella, Beat, Alan, Fern, Francine, Binky, and Mavis.

Their topic of discussion was the two issues of the Spongebrain Smartypants comic that had come out to date. "Your cartoons are a riot," Francine commended Binky and Mavis as she held hands with Arthur. "Where did you get those ideas?"

Mavis pointed at her curly, bespectacled noggin. "It all comes out of here," she boasted.

"I sure hope your well of imagination doesn't run dry," said Arthur. "I want to see more."

"You will, on Monday," Binky told him.

"And we're thinking of sending them to the Elwood Times," Mavis added.

As the kids socialized and ate, Beat's sensitive rabbit ears picked up a faraway sound. "Do you hear that?" she asked the others.

"I don't hear anything," replied Prunella between mouthfuls of popcorn.

Everyone fell silent. "Oh, wait, I hear it now," said Fern, raising her ears slightly.

Gazing out the window in the direction of the sound, they saw an ambulance with flashing lights speed through an intersection a block away.

"Someone's hurt!" exclaimed Muffy.

"I wonder if it's anyone we know," said Alan.

"I'll check it out," Beat offered, and she hurried through the condominium door.

Running after the siren, the rabbit-aardvark girl covered four blocks before reaching the location where the ambulance had pulled to the side of the street. At the mouth of a driveway, two paramedics were tending to a fallen girl while a panicked-looking bear man stood next to a Volvo and watched the drama unfold.

Upon drawing close enough to see the face of the injured girl, Beat gasped in shock. It was April Murphy, the curly hair on the left side of her head stained with blood. Her eyes were opened and blinking, but seemed unfocused, and a large bruise was present on her right arm.

Beat had never seen a person hit by a car before, and wasn't sure what to do, other than stay out of the way of emergency personnel. Approaching the man who apparently had driven the car, she asked, "What happened, sir?"

"She...she came out of nowhere," stammered the hapless man. "I couldn't...I couldn't stop in time."

While she picked up her cell phone to call Muffy's number, Beat could hear April's weak voice mumbling behind her. "The stone...the stone..."

It took only minutes for Beat's friends to gather at the accident site, by which time the paramedics were lifting April into the ambulance bay on a stretcher. They murmured to each other, wondering how they could help.

"I'll call Augusta," said Muffy. She dialed the number and raised her phone to her ear.

Five blocks away in the middle of the park, Augusta was locked in a passionate embrace with Portinari when her cell phone rang. "Oh, I should have turned that off," she grumbled, reaching down to hit the phone's power button.

Muffy folded up her phone. "She's not answering," she said in discouragement.

"So what now?" Prunella wondered as the ambulance's siren started to wail again.

"I don't know who else we can call," said Francine. "Her parents are dead."

"And the Armstrongs don't live here anymore," Arthur added.

The bear man, meanwhile, was relating his side of the story to George. "It's like she materialized in front of the car. I'll never forget the terror on her face...but it was too late." As they spoke, the ambulance rushed down the street and through an intersection.

"April said something about a stone before they took her," Beat informed her friends.

Alan looked at Prunella. "This doesn't sound good," he remarked. The rat girl nodded knowingly.

Then Fern stooped down and plucked something out of the gutter. "Here's a pretty stone," she said, holding an object that resembled an inflated red marble in her fingers. "Maybe this is what she was talking about."

Alan peered at the stone, but saw nothing remarkable about it.

"Maybe it's a magic stone that makes you invisible," suggested George, who had returned from talking with the driver. "That would explain why he didn't see her in time."

"The only thing invisible here is your brain, George," Beat criticized him.

Fern's eyes widened when she recalled the vanishing indentations she had seen in the grass next to what had been the Crosswire mansion.

"It must belong to April," said Muffy. "Let me take it, Fern. I'll give it back to her when she gets out of the hospital."

"No," replied Fern in a tone that hinted at a sudden epiphany. "I'll do it."

Muffy shrugged. "Whatever."

Fern tossed the stone up, caught it in her palm, and motioned to Alan and George. "Come on, let's go to my place and have a look at it."

"Hmph!" grunted Muffy as she watched the two boys walk away with Fern. "April may be dead for the rest of her life, and all they care about is that stupid rock."

Halfway down the block, Fern was expressing her opinions about the mysterious stone to George and Alan. "You may be right, George. Today when we were at the mansion, I saw what looked like footprints in the grass. I looked again a little later, and they were gone. I think April may have been spying on us."

"If we can figure out how it works, maybe we can use it to spy on her," Alan suggested. "I mean, once she's out of the hospital."

"Think what you could do with a real stone of invisibility," George mused. "You could sneak into the girls' locker room. I mean, unless you're a girl. Then you wouldn't need to sneak."

Fern rolled her eyes and wondered if inviting the moose boy along had been a good idea.

"I wonder if the person who stole the Los Cactos crystal had a stone of invisibility," George went on.

"The what?" was Alan's response.

"It's a special crystal that was created at Los Cactos National Laboratory. Binky and Mavis told us all about it in their science report. Someone got past the motion sensors and stole it. I think you'd have to be invisible to do that."

"I remember it," said Fern. "How could I forget that day?"

TBC


	18. Invisible Friends

"She suffered a moderate concussion," said Nurse Mulligan, a fox woman with stubby red hair, to Augusta and Dr. Portinari. "We expect her to make a full recovery. With luck, we may release her as early as Monday afternoon."  
  
"I'm glad to hear that," said Augusta, who was again wearing her turquoise embroidered dress.  
  
April lay in the hospital bed in front of them, her right arm bandaged, a dressing covering the left side of her head. Through her drowsiness and headache she dimly made out the faces of Augusta and the nurse...but what was the creature standing next to them?  
  
"Does your daughter participate in athletics at school?" asked Nurse Mulligan, lifting a pen to write on a clipboard.  
  
"She's not our daughter," Portinari replied.  
  
"She's...my roommate," Augusta explained.  
  
April knew she had to be hallucinating. It was natural to do so, given her head injury and the drugs the nurse had given to help her sleep. The being she saw had Portinari's size, shape, and clothes, but not his physical appearance. It had green, scaly skin, an overhanging forehead, eyes like red dots, and a grossly elongated nose with a point at the end. It clearly was not human.  
  
She felt the warm contact of Augusta's hand against her own. "We'll be back soon," she heard the rabbit woman say. "Stay alive, okay?"  
  
"I will," she choked out weakly. "Did you find the stone?"  
  
"I looked all over the spot where the accident happened," Augusta answered. "It wasn't there."  
  
Through foggy eyes April watched Augusta and Portinari turn and walk out of the hospital room; the back of Portinari's head looked like a chunk of ripened avocado flesh.  
  
As she dropped off to sleep again, she recalled George's admitted suspicion that Portinari was a space alien, and figured that the power of suggestion might have caused her to suffer a similar delusion.  
  
She felt more refreshed after an hour's rest. Augusta and Portinari returned for another visit, and to April's relief, the psychiatrist appeared to her as a normal, unremarkable talking bulldog.  
  
----  
  
"I am invisible...I am invisible...I am invisible..."  
  
Alan opened his eyes, and beheld to his disappointment that he was very visible. Dressed in his Sunday outfit complete with suit jacket and tie, he stood in the middle of his bedroom and clutched April's red stone in his closed hand. He had enjoyed no more success at vanishing than Fern had the previous evening.  
  
His mother's blond head popped through the doorway. "We're leaving for church in ten minutes," she announced.  
  
He was beginning to think it might be hopeless; either the stone wasn't magical after all, or it operated on a principle that Augusta had explained to April but to no one else. As he was about to drop the stone in his pocket and leave, he heard Fern's voice drawing closer.  
  
"Any luck, Alan?" asked the poodle girl as she bounded into the room, her blue dress skirt flopping about.  
  
"Nothing," the boy replied sadly. "I don't know how to make it work. I guess there's nothing left to do but destroy it so April can't use it."  
  
"Too bad," said Fern as she straightened her hair bow in Alan's dresser mirror.  
  
Alan held out the sapphire-colored stone and dropped it into Fern's palm. "You've got another hour before your church meeting starts," he said to her. "Maybe you'll get lucky."  
  
As she lowered the object into one of her pockets, Alan began to speak somberly. "I've been thinking. All my life I've been taught that God is watching us, and knows if we're good or bad, and gives us rewards for being good, and punishments for being bad. But now Augusta has come onto the scene, and she can control how good or bad I am if she wants to. What I want to know is, what happens to the whole system of rewards and punishments if someone else can take away my ability to choose, and force me to be good or bad?"  
  
"Hmm, I don't know," Fern answered. "Maybe God will reward Augusta if she makes people good, or punish her if she makes people bad."  
  
"That's a scary thought," said Alan, taking a seat on the edge of his bed.  
  
Fern sat down next to him and kept up the conversation. "Before the incident with the ghost, I believed that people go to heaven when they die, and just stay there. But Rubella believes that some people get stuck here instead of going to heaven, and that there are some kinds of spirits who were never people at all. And with all the magical stuff that happened after Dolly showed up...I don't know what I should believe anymore, Alan."  
  
"Me neither," Alan admitted with a sigh. "Maybe we should just believe what we hear in church without question, and not let those things bother us."  
  
They pondered for a few seconds, then Fern's face lit up. Pulling the stone from her pocket, she returned it to Alan.  
  
"Stand up," she ordered, and they both stood. "Now hold out the stone, close your eyes, and concentrate." Alan did so.  
  
Fern could still see him.  
  
"Omigosh!" she suddenly blurted out. "Alan, where did you go?"  
  
The boy's eyes flew open just as his body faded into nothing.  
  
"It worked!" Fern cried joyously. "You're invisible!"  
  
"You're right," came Alan's astonished voice from the empty air. "I can't see myself anymore. This is incredible."  
  
"So that's the secret," Fern marveled. "To turn invisible, you have to believe you're invisible. I tricked you into thinking you were invisible."  
  
Alan reappeared, starting with his ears and going down. "Oh, I'm visible again," he complained.  
  
"You have to believe without question that you're invisible," Fern explained. "It doesn't work if you have doubts."  
  
"Interesting," said Alan, gazing at the stone in his hand. "I wonder if that's how April sees it."  
  
"Let me try it," said Fern, snatching the stone away from him. Holding it in front of her, she closed her eyes, pursed her lips, and started to flicker.  
  
"It's working," Alan told her. "Believe harder."  
  
A moment later, Fern blinked out of Alan's view. "Am I invisible?" she asked, and immediately reappeared.  
  
"Don't ask that question," Alan instructed her. "Here, let me try again."  
  
Tightly grasping the stone, he caused himself to quickly vanish. "You're doing good," Fern told him. "I can't see you. Wait, I can see you again."  
  
Alan instantly rematerialized.  
  
"Psych," said Fern, giggling.  
  
Mrs. Powers stepped into the bedroom, wearing a floral dress and pearl necklace. "Time to go, Alan," she told her son. "You can play with Fern later."  
  
"Okay, Mom," said Alan, handing the stone back to Fern.  
  
As the two kids made their way out of the house, Alan made his fears known to Fern. "Keeping the stone away from Augusta will be a big problem. If we hide it, she'll use truth spells on us to find out where it's hidden."  
  
"I guess the only thing we can do is stay away from her," said Fern.  
  
"But that would be hard to do 24/7," was Alan's response.  
  
"You're right." Fern was now standing with Alan in front of the Powers family car. "We could threaten to destroy it unless April tells us her plans."  
  
"Let's talk about it later," said Alan, noticing the impatient expressions of his parents.  
  
TBC 


	19. Falling Rocks

After Fern and Alan had enjoyed a quick Sunday brunch, they went to Van's house and hitched a ride to the hospital with Quinn and Odette.  
  
"I'm surprised April didn't call me," said Odette, who sat in the front passenger seat of the Cooper family Buick as her sister drove. "I didn't know about her accident until you kids told me."  
  
"Yes, well, nobody sees much of her these days," quipped Alan from the back seat. Fern elbowed him coyly.  
  
Odette shifted her long swan neck to and fro, trying to find a comfortable pose--which, as it turned out, was holding her head six inches in front of Fern's face. "Why don't you stick your head out the window?" the poodle girl suggested.  
  
"Too dangerous," Odette replied.  
  
"You should use Van's reward money and buy a convertible," Alan proposed.  
  
"We thought of doing that," said Odette, bobbing her head back and forth in a manner that was starting to make Fern nauseous. "We decided to put it in the college fund instead. But it's not a big deal. I'm a swan, not a giraffe."  
  
They soon arrived at April's hospital room, which was on the sixth floor. Odette and Quinn went inside to greet their friend, while Alan and Fern fell back and hid themselves next to the doorway. Glancing around to make sure they were alone, Fern drew the invisibility stone from her pocket.  
  
"It doesn't look very hard," Alan remarked. "A six-floor drop should be enough to break it."  
  
At April's bedside, Quinn and Odette were talking with the bandaged cat girl, who was sitting up. "Van's about to spend some more time in the hospital," Quinn related. "He needs more surgery on his spine."  
  
"Will he be able to walk afterwards?" asked April.  
  
"Not likely," Quinn answered. "But he'll be in a lot less pain."  
  
"I'm sorry I haven't visited more," said April to the Cooper girls. "I'm busy with school, and I'm working on a project with Augusta, so I don't have much time on my hands."  
  
"If it gets to be too much, you can always travel backwards in time," Odette joked.  
  
April chuckled. "Don't tell me you're starting to believe those stories."  
  
"Of course not," said Odette with a grin.  
  
April sighed with relief. "They're good kids, Fern Walters and Alan Powers. But they think anyone who's associated with Augusta must be trying to blow up the world."  
  
"Yes," Odette responded, "you'd think they would be more trusting of their old friend Sue Ellen."  
  
In the hallway outside April's room, Fern idly tossed the red stone up and down while Alan stared into space with an introspective look.  
  
Finally he spoke. "Fern...I'm not sure if we should do this."  
  
Fern looked at him with an air of incredulity.  
  
"Odette's right," Alan continued. "That's our old friend Sue Ellen in there. We've been treating her like she's a monster from the future who's come to destroy us all."  
  
"But she may not be the Sue Ellen we know anymore," Fern countered. "Her parents were murdered. Things like that change a person."  
  
Hearing voices from outside of the room, April wiggled her cat ears. "Who's out there?" she wondered aloud.  
  
"I think we should give the stone back to her," Alan said to Fern. "It's her property, and besides, we don't know how to use it well enough to..."  
  
Before he could finish his sentence, Fern disappeared.  
  
Alan heard faint footsteps trailing off into the hospital room. She was going through with it. She was more determined than he had imagined...  
  
He burst into the room in time to see the invisible Fern yank a bedsheet from a table and cover herself with it.  
  
"Wh-what the..." stammered Odette in horror. Quinn could only gape in disbelief.  
  
"Fern, stop it!" Alan yelled at the white apparition that was floating to the foot of April's bed.  
  
"Aaaapril Muuuurphy," it groaned, waving its sheet-covered arms. "I am the Ghost of Christmas Past. You must confess your dealings with Augusta." April only glared defiantly.  
  
"This must be some kind of trick," said Odette. "But April Fools was two weeks ago."  
  
"Nobody makes a fool of this April," said the cat girl firmly. "Hand over the stone, Fern."  
  
"Confess...confess..." wailed the hovering phantom.  
  
"Stop clowning around," grumbled Alan, grabbing a corner of the sheet and pulling it away to reveal empty air underneath.  
  
Moments later a window was unlatched and pushed open. Before Alan could reach the spot, Fern materialized, her hand stretched through the window pane; a sapphire glint was visible in her closed fist.  
  
"Okay, this is officially weird," Quinn remarked.  
  
The poodle girl's eyes showed steely resolve. "Either tell us what you and Augusta are planning," she warned April, "or say goodbye to your precious stone of invisibility."  
  
April remained silent. Her hard expression didn't change.  
  
"Please, Fern," Alan urged. "Give her the stone. It belongs to her."  
  
"Not on your life!" Fern snapped, pushing her arm and the stone further out the window. "Thanks to Augusta, I almost had to spend the rest of my life as a two-headed half-boy freak. Whatever she's trying to do now, it has to be stopped!"  
  
Seeing that April and the Cooper girls displayed no interest in saving the stone from Fern, Alan stepped slowly toward the girl.  
  
But not slowly enough.  
  
Fern opened her hand, and the red stone plummeted out of sight.  
  
As April gnashed her teeth in anger, Alan rushed to the window and pushed Fern aside. He saw the stone in the middle of its drop, about three stories down. It fell and fell...and landed in the middle of a bush in a strip of dirt next to the building's wall.  
  
"D'oh!" grunted Fern, slapping her forehead.  
  
"How about that," Alan remarked. "From one fern to another."  
  
It took him only a few minutes to find the undamaged stone among the bush's unruly fronds, and bring it back to April.  
  
"This is a bad idea," Fern insisted.  
  
"It's for the best," said Alan as he dropped the rock into April's palm. "For all we know, she may need it to save her parents."  
  
April wrapped her fingers tightly around the stone, leaned back, and rested her head on the pillow. "Thank you, Alan," she said wearily.  
  
"You're welcome," Alan responded. "But promise me you'll only use your powers for good."  
  
The cat girl nodded slightly.  
  
TBC 


	20. Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better

"Kids, a new student has joined us today," announced Mrs. Krantz, the moose teacher of Alan and Prunella's fifth-grade class. "Say hello to Michaela Chanel, okaaaay?"  
  
"Hello," intoned the bored kids.  
  
Mickie Chanel stood at the front of the classroom, wearing a white chiffon dress and looking over the other pupils with an expression of disdain.  
  
"We just moved into the former Crosswire mansion," she recounted with perfect aplomb. "It wasn't my first choice. My parents were about to say no, but they suddenly changed their minds. So here we are. We have nothing to do with the Chanel perfume company. My father became rich by inventing a new lightweight alloy for use in aircraft and bicycles. I have many interests, including music, sports, painting, and science, and I'm very good at all of them. I hope you will all soon be my friends, and by friends, I mean admirers."  
  
Murmurs filled the classroom as the orange-haired aardvark girl returned to her desk. "She needs to let a little air out of her ego," Prunella muttered to Alan.  
  
Mrs. Krantz proceeded with her lesson, her grating, affected voice annoying most of the students. "In 1914, Archduke Francis Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary was assassinated, which led to World War I, okaaaay?"  
  
Mickie raised her hand. "Yes, Michaela?"  
  
"I'll give you $100 if you go through the rest of the day without saying 'okaaaay'," the girl offered.  
  
All eyes turned to Mickie in astonishment. Some of the kids were taken aback by the new girl's boldness, while others silently hoped that the teacher would accept the challenge.  
  
Mrs. Krantz regarded Mickie thoughtfully for a few seconds. "Do I really say it that often?" she finally asked.  
  
"Yes," all the kids replied in unison.  
  
The moose woman appeared a bit embarrassed. "All right," she said with a lack of feeling, "I accept."  
  
For the rest of the period, the kids paid no attention to the historical details Mrs. Krantz scratched on the board. They were more interested in seeing whether she would earn the money Mickie had promised her.  
  
The bell rang, and the teacher had managed so far to excise 'okaaaay' from her speech, although she still spoke in a dull, slow tone.  
  
"I can't believe it," Marina said to Alan as she walked alongside him in the hallway, tapping with her cane. "The new girl bribed Mrs. Krantz in front of the whole class."  
  
"I wouldn't call it a bribe," Alan responded. "She didn't try to get the teacher to change her grades. If she's as smart as she claims to be, she shouldn't need to."  
  
As if showing off how fast she could walk, Mickie strode past them and slowed down. "Oh, hi, Mickie," Alan greeted her. "We were just making snide comments about you."  
  
"That's fine," said the new girl, "as long as they're about me." As the three fifth-graders made their way to the washrooms, Mickie continued, "They say you're the smartest kid in the class. Care to see who's smarter?"  
  
Alan couldn't resist such a match. "Sure."  
  
"The sum of the squares of the sides of a right triangle..." Mickie began.  
  
"...is equal to the square of the hypotenuse," Alan finished.  
  
"Not bad," Mickie beamed. "For every action..."  
  
"...there's an equal and opposite reaction," Alan answered. "Newton's third law of motion. Now here's one for you. The speed of light is the same..."  
  
"...for all observers, regardless of their motion," Mickie completed. "Einstein's theory of relativity. Can you name three sons of Johann Sebastian Bach who were also composers?"  
  
"Uh...no," replied Alan.  
  
"Carl Philip Emmanuel, Johann Christian, and Wilhelm Friedemann," said Mickie proudly.  
  
"Classical music isn't my specialty," Alan told her.  
  
"Everything's my specialty," boasted Mickie as she disappeared into the girls' room with Marina.  
  
As he stood in front of the washroom entrances, Alan thought about how unreasonable he had been upon first meeting Beat Simon. Now another girl had come along who could equal him intellectually. At least, he thought, his friends wouldn't be able to tolerate her well enough to ask her to help with their homework.  
  
Music class followed, and Mickie demonstrated that she could play the clarinet as well as Binky, and the violin as skilfully as Van (although he gave the excuse that his back was troubling him). As she finished tearing through Rimsky-Korsakov's "Flight of the Bumblebee" arranged for clarinet solo, the other kids applauded half-heartedly.  
  
"This is weird," Binky said to Muffy when Mickie had turned her back. "How can somebody be good at everything?"  
  
"There must be something she's not good at," said Muffy, peering at the new girl. "I mean, something she's not good at, that I'm good at. And her fashion sense is impeccable, so I don't know."  
  
Mickie continued to display her talents during morning recess, as she competed with Prunella to see which girl could jump-rope the longest. Many of the kids were gathered in the playground to watch, including Arthur and Francine, who held hands, as usual. The ropes flew furiously, and after about two minutes Prunella tripped and lost the struggle to the gloating Mickie.  
  
While she followed Arthur away from the crowd, she saw Beat on a bench nearby, looking rather depressed. It had become a frequent sight over the past week. Asking Arthur to excuse her, she hurried to the bench to find out what was bothering her friend. "What's the matter, Beat?" she asked earnestly.  
  
The rabbit-aardvark girl only sighed glumly.  
  
"You can tell me," Francine assured her.  
  
Beat turned to her with pain in her eyes. "Something's happened to me, Frankie," she admitted.  
  
"What?" Francine put her arm around Beat's neck, hoping to make her feel better.  
  
"You remember last year," Beat began, "when I told you how I felt about you?"  
  
"Yes," replied Francine, looking about to make certain no one was listening. "And I felt the same way about you, but I wanted to be normal."  
  
"And now you are," Beat went on. "Getting Sue Ellen's personality in your head changed you, and now you have a beautiful boyfriend."  
  
Francine gazed lovingly at Arthur, who had joined George and Sal at the swings.  
  
"Let me ask you something," said Beat. "Dolly's love potion made you fall in love with Alan, at least for a day. How did you feel about him after it wore off?"  
  
Francine pursed her lips and thought. "Uh, about the same way as I did before," she answered.  
  
"I wasn't so lucky," Beat confided. "I was a different girl after the potion. I lost my feelings for you. And there's more. I wasn't interested in boys before, but after the potion, I became fascinated with them."  
  
Francine only stared at her, not knowing how to respond.  
  
"I think that's why I was so angry with Dolly," Beat continued. "She used magic to change who I was, and not just for a day, but permanently."  
  
"Join the club," said Francine. "Thanks to Mr. Putnam, I have two people in my head, and I'm in love with Arthur. I didn't ask for that to happen to me, but that doesn't mean I can't be happy."  
  
"Happy," Beat mused. "It's funny. So many people are unhappy with what they have, and they think they need more if they want to be happy. But who decides what makes you happy? Do you decide, or has the decision been made for you?"  
  
Unable to catch her meaning, Francine gave her a blank look.  
  
"Look at poor Mr. Winslow," Beat went on. "He thought he would find happiness by marrying Mrs. Harris, but after Dolly changed him, that wasn't true. You could say she decided what would make him happy. Just as Mr. Putnam decided what would make you happy, and Dolly's potion decided what would make me happy."  
  
"And what would make you happy?" Francine asked her.  
  
Beat sighed. "I used to think little girls who wanted boyfriends were silly. But now I'm one of those little girls, and I want a boyfriend. I can't help it. It's because of what I am. It's because of what Dolly made me."  
  
Francine looked up and down the playground, where the kids were starting to disperse toward the school building. "There are lots of boys to choose from," she remarked. "Do you have a particular boy in mind?"  
  
Beat stared into space, not answering.  
  
TBC 


	21. Keep Your Enemies Closer

Spongebrain Smartypants: Issue 3, by Mavis Cutler and Binky Barnes. 

Spongebrain was hanging out at his house with his friends, Faith the Heart, Hale the Lung, Libby the Liver, and Phil the Stomach.

"After Mrs. Strong's lesson on time management," Spongebrain addressed the others, "I went to the store and bought a day planner." He proudly displayed a small notepad in a black leather case. The lines on each page were filled in with BREAKFAST, THINK, SCHOOL, LUNCH, SCHOOL, THINK, THINK, DINNER, THINK...

"I don't need a day planner," said Faith. "I like to be spontaneous and do things on the spur of the moment." To illustrate, she unexpectedly leaned over and kissed Spongebrain on the cheek, causing him to blush.

"I've been using a day planner for a long time," said Libby. "That's how I'm able to accomplish so much in the short space of a day." She held up her well-worn day planner, in which was written, BREAKFAST, SCHOOL, LUNCH, SCHOOL, BALLET LESSONS, FENCING LESSONS, DINNER, HOMEWORK, PIANO LESSONS, ACTING LESSONS...

"I went to the store to buy a day planner," Hale recounted, "but they came in so many different colors, I didn't know which one to pick, so I asked the lady who worked in the store what her favorite color was, and she said yellow, but yellow wasn't one of the colors, so she asked me what my favorite color is, and I said I didn't have a favorite color, because I liked all colors equally..."

"Don't you ever shut up?" Libby asked him.

Hale checked his day planner, in which was written, on page after page, TALK, TALK, TALK, TALK...

"Uh, no," he replied.

"I bought a day planner too," said Phil as he emptied a bag of potato chips into himself. Reaching into his food-filled backpack, he fished around for the day planner...but couldn't find it. "Oh, no!" he wailed in terror. "I've lost my day planner! I'LL STARVE!"

Mickie laughed hysterically as she finished reading the comic strip. "I'm so glad you like it," said Mavis, who had just handed her the first three issues of the cartoon she co-authored with Binky.

"These are hilarious," said Mickie, still chuckling. "I wish I'd come up with this myself."

"You can always create your own cartoon," Mavis suggested. "There's room for more than one cartooning team in the world."

As Mickie watched the hamster girl walk away, a wicked plan began to form in her mind...

----

About an hour after school ended, Fern and Alan received calls from April requesting their presence at George's house. Upon arrival, they were greeted by the moose boy and the cat girl, who still had bandages on her head and right arm. "Thanks for coming," said April, who still sounded a little weak. "We have something important to discuss."

In the living room, Sal was transfixed by a new TV anime called "Pretty Dragon Card Girl Exodus", which had something to do with pretty girls who turned into dragons, fought villains with trading cards, and were fleeing from their doomed homeworld. "Sal, can you leave, please?" George asked of her. "We're having a meeting." The little girl didn't react, but only stared at the screen.

"We could wait for a commercial break," Alan proposed.

Fern glanced at the TV screen. "It_is_ a commercial break."

"Let's go to my room," said George, who clutched a folded piece of paper in one hand.

When the four kids had secluded themselves in George's room (all standing, as there was a shortage of chairs and bed space), April informed them of the purpose of their meeting. "No doubt you've all heard of Rick Portinari by now," she began.

"I know Augusta's dating him," Alan replied, "but I haven't met him in person."

"Me neither," Fern added.

Feeling a little pain in her head, April seated herself in the only available chair. "When I was in the hospital, Augusta and Dr. Portinari came to visit a few times," she related. "The first time they visited I was still sleepy from the drugs, and Dr. Portinari didn't look like himself."

"He looked like this," said George, unfolding the paper he was holding. Alan and Fern gaped incredulously at a rough drawing of an inhuman creature's head. It had a scaly, bald scalp, a protruding forehead, a tentacle-like nose, and small beady eyes. "Buster drew this and faxed it to me. He saw Dr. Portinari in the airport while he was leaving."

"At first I thought I was dreaming or hallucinating," said April. "Then George showed me this drawing. I think Dr. Portinari isn't what he seems."

"He's an alien," said George confidently.

"Augusta met him less than two weeks ago, and she's already head over heels in love with him," April went on. "But the future Augusta dated for more than a year before she had any romantic success. I think he may be from the future, like me--only he came back to stop Augusta's plan."

Fern smirked triumphantly at her. "So, you admit that Augusta has a plan. Care to fill us in on the details?"

"I can't tell you everything," said April. "Yes, Augusta has a plan to help me save my parents. No, it doesn't involve sucking all the evil out of the world."

"That's a relief," said Alan. "I think."

"But that's not important right now," April continued. "Since the two of you were kind enough to return the invisibility stone to me, I want to propose an alliance between us. Dr. Portinari doesn't know you, so you can get close to him without making him suspicious."

"And what if we don't want an alliance?" was Fern's sharp reply.

April scowled disappointedly. "I know you don't trust me or Augusta, Fern. But if I'm right about Dr. Portinari, then you should trust him even less. Think about it. If he's an alien, then he probably doesn't care about making Earth a better place to live, and he may even be part of an invasion. If he's from the future, then he must be trying to stop some pivotal event from taking place. If he thinks he can defeat Augusta, then he must have some serious technology, or even magic. I don't know if the invisibility stone would be of any use against him. That's why I want your help."

Fern only folded her arms and stared indignantly.

"Come on, Fern," said April warmly. "I know how much you like to snoop."

"Uh, we'll think about it," said Alan.

He and Fern departed from George's house, and immediately started debating what April had presented to them.

"She must be crazy if she thinks we'll help her when she's still keeping secrets from us," Fern remarked.

"On the other hand, maybe she's making up the alien part," Alan mused. "Maybe she recognizes Dr. Portinari as one of the people involved in the conspiracy against her parents."

Fern fell silent and laid a finger on her chin.

"Have you ever seen The Godfather?" Alan asked her as they were crossing the street.

"No," Fern answered. "My dad likes that movie, but he won't let me watch it because I'm a girl."

"There's a line from The Godfather," said Alan. "Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer. If we cooperate with April, then we can keep tabs on her, and hopefully learn more of her secrets."

"Maybe you're right," said Fern thoughtfully.

----

Several days passed. April shed her dressings for smaller bandages, and expressed concern that she might be left with unsightly scars. Portinari visited Augusta frequently; April scrutinized the psychiatrist for any clues regarding his true nature, but always left when they started kissing. Finally he invited her to come to his apartment on Saturday evening, and provided an address, which April greedily memorized.

It was Friday morning, and the kids in Mr. Wald's class were gathering for another lesson. On one end of the room, Muffy and Van were talking.

"How soon do you go into surgery, Van?" Muffy asked the duck boy.

"Next Wednesday," was his answer.

"I hope you get through it all right," said Muffy.

"I will," Van assured her. "It's routine."

As the teacher prepared to stand, Mavis burst into the classroom, gripping a page of the Elwood Times in her hand. "Binky!" she cried out. "Our cartoon has been stolen!"

Startled, Binky took the paper away from Mavis and glanced over it. The first three Spongebrain Smartypants strips had been published, together with a short article whose headline read, LOCAL GIRL DRAWS NEW COMIC. Underneath it was a photo of the grinning Mickie Chanel.

TBC


	22. Sick as a Dog

Having parted with $100 of her hard-earned allowance as a result of Mrs. Krantz' linguistic vigilance, Mickie met with another trial upon leaving the classroom after first period. Gathered to confront her were most of the kids in Mr. Wald's class, with Binky and Mavis foremost.  
  
"You're a lousy thief!" Mavis bellowed at her. "You stole our cartoons and printed them in the newspaper!"  
  
Mickie smiled condescendingly. "I didn't steal anything. You don't have a copyright."  
  
"What's a copyright?" asked Binky.  
  
"It's the thing that comes after the title in a book," Mavis explained. "It means other people can't claim the book as their own."  
  
"Oh, is that what it is?" Binky marveled. "I thought it was the machine they use to make copies of a book."  
  
"That's a printing press," Mavis informed him.  
  
"There's nothing you can do," said Mickie smugly. "I've already applied to the copyright office. Soon Spongebrain and all his friends will belong to me."  
  
"We can sue you," said Binky. "Right, Muffy?"  
  
"Not if she gets a copyright before you do," Muffy advised him. "And the person you should talk to about suing somebody is Van. His dad's a lawyer."  
  
Mavis glared accusingly at Mickie. "You won't stop Binky and me from making more cartoons," she warned.  
  
"Why should I want to stop you?" said Mickie with a chuckle. "I can just publish your cartoons as my own, and I wouldn't have to pay you."  
  
"What a jerk," Francine grumbled.  
  
"Was I ever that much of a snob?" Muffy asked her friends.  
  
"Not only is she better than we are," Arthur complained, "but she has to rub it in our faces."  
  
"I think we should call her Mickie Chanel, the Snob from Hell," Fern proposed.  
  
"The next Spongebrain cartoon will appear in tomorrow's paper," Mickie notified her hostile audience. "I drew it by myself."  
  
Seeing that no good would come from criticizing Mickie's actions, the kids dispersed and went their ways. As Arthur headed toward his locker, Francine caught up with him and grabbed his hand. The aardvark boy, who normally smiled pleasantly at such a show of affection, looked somewhat startled instead.  
  
"I'd like to punch that stuck-up Mickie right in the kisser," Francine groused.  
  
"Uh, yeah," Arthur replied semi-obliviously. "So would I."  
  
"I need some cheering up," said Francine. "Kiss me, Arthur."  
  
She jutted out her lips, and Arthur hesitantly pressed his own against them for about three seconds.  
  
"You don't kiss me like you used to," Francine observed as she pulled her face away.  
  
"Sorry about that," said Arthur, wiping off his lips with his fingers. "I've gotta go, Francine."  
  
The poor monkey girl didn't feel cheered up at all. As Arthur disappeared from her view down a hallway, she wondered if the boy had lost his excitement about their relationship.  
  
----  
  
As Mickie had promised, her own Spongebrain cartoon appeared in the Times the next morning. Alan was reading it in a paper he had found abandoned on a bus seat, and concluded that it wasn't as funny as the Mavis/Binky strips, nor as true to the characters.  
  
Around him were seated George, Fern, and April, who was explaining their plan to gather intelligence about Rick Portinari. "George and I will hide," she went on, "while Fern and Alan will use a false pretense to get inside Dr. Portinari's apartment. Once inside, they'll look around and take note of anything suspicious or unearthly."  
  
"What if he catches us?" Fern asked her.  
  
"If you don't report back in ten minutes," April answered, "I'll go in and rescue you." She briefly held up the glittering invisibility stone, and then replaced it in her pocket.  
  
Throughout the five-mile bus trip to Portinari's location, Alan and Fern toyed with the possibility that they might be walking into a deadly trap. On the other hand, as long as they kept April busy investigating Portinari, she wouldn't be available to assist in Augusta's mysterious scheme.  
  
They soon reached the intersection where Portinari's complex sat on one corner. "The apartment number is 105," April informed Fern and Alan. "Good luck."  
  
Wondering why they had agreed to this stunt, they walked across the street toward the apartment building while George and April hid behind a tall hedge.  
  
Inside apartment 105, Rick Portinari was inserting packing material into a square cardboard box. He whistled cheerfully, thinking of the wondrous evening he would enjoy when Augusta came to visit him. Then he heard an urgent knock on his door.  
  
He opened it to see the grim-faced Alan with an arm supporting Fern, who was clutching her stomach and moaning miserably. "Please, sir, I need to use your phone," Alan pleaded. "My sister ate mushrooms, and I think they were poisonous."  
  
"Oooohhh..." groaned Fern, rolling her eyes as if delirious.  
  
Alarmed, Portinari took the poodle girl by the shoulders and carefully led her into the apartment, all the while telling himself that these were the most dissimilar siblings he had ever met. "The phone's in the bedroom," he told Alan, motioning with his large bulldog head toward a doorway.  
  
The boy rushed into the bedroom, found the telephone on a nightstand, and picked up the receiver. The cord was flexible enough that he could pretend to make conversation with an imaginary dispatcher while quietly peeking into closets and opening drawers. Other than the fact that the good doctor seemed to have very little clothing, he found nothing remarkable.  
  
Meanwhile, Portinari tended to Fern the imaginary invalid as best he knew how. "Ooohh, I'm sick," the girl complained. "I'm sick as a dog. I think I'm gonna throw up. Do you have a bucket or anything?"  
  
Portinari, now more worried than ever, hurried into the nearby kitchen in search of a suitable receptacle. Alan, having heard Fern's well-acted lines, laid down the phone and came back into the living room. An opened cardboard box sat on a bare desk with a few small drawers; he deftly opened each one, looking for unusual items.  
  
In the last drawer, he found something quite unusual.  
  
It was a small, beige, box-shaped object with a button and six numeric dials embedded in one side.  
  
Hearing Portinari's footsteps drawing closer from the kitchen, Alan slammed the drawer shut. Standing with his hands behind his back, he said innocently, "The ambulance is on its way."  
  
The psychiatrist laid a blue mop bucket next to the couch where Fern lay feigning illness. "Thank you, doctor," said the girl weakly.  
  
Portinari's eyes suddenly widened. "Doctor? How did you know I'm a doctor?"  
  
From the bedroom, he could hear the phone beeping loudly as a signal that someone had left the receiver off the hook for too long without making a call.  
  
Stricken with terror, Alan grabbed Fern's hand and pulled her up from the couch. The two kids ran with utmost haste through the door of Portinari's apartment and onto the sidewalk. The man chased them as far as the doorway, then stopped and glared, his jaw hanging open.  
  
Fern and Alan didn't stop running until they reached the rendezvous point behind the hedge on the other side of the street.  
  
"Is he an alien?" George asked curiously.  
  
"What did you find?" April wanted to know.  
  
"Not much," Alan replied. "He doesn't have many clothes, but maybe that's because he just moved here, and the rest of his stuff hasn't arrived. There was a box on his desk, and it looked like he was about to pack some things. Also, there was a little gadget in one of the desk drawers."  
  
"What did the gadget look like?" inquired April.  
  
"It was tan-colored," Alan described it. "On one side there were six dials with numbers in them."  
  
It appeared to Alan, Fern, and George that the breath had just been sucked out of April. After a moment of shocked silence, the cat girl narrowed her eyes and scowled angrily.  
  
"I'll be right back," she said darkly, pushing past the other three kids.  
  
They watched in awe as April marched across the street, fists clenched tightly.  
  
Another knock came at Portinari's apartment door. The doctor looked through the peephole this time, suspecting the same two children might have returned. Instead of them, he saw nothing.  
  
Opening the door, he waved his head about as if to find those responsible for the joke. Then something pushed him forcibly backwards, almost causing him to lose his footing. It felt like hands...but nobody was there...  
  
The next thing he realized, the drawers in his desk were opening by themselves, one after another. The object with dials levitated out of one drawer, and started to float across the room.  
  
Now outraged, Portinari threw himself at the invisible presence that was making off with the gadget. He felt a brief sensation of fabric, flesh, bandages, and curly hair against his skin--followed by a sharp, stunning blow to the back of his neck. He landed helplessly on the floor, dazed and in pain.  
  
Fern, George, and Alan were waiting breathlessly behind the hedge for April's return, when the girl suddenly materialized before them, clutching the gadget in one hand. "Yeah, that's what I saw," Alan verified. "What is it?"  
  
"Never mind what it is," said April firmly. "We need to get to a phone."  
  
She glanced repeatedly over her shoulder while making the two-block trek to a service station, but observed no sign that Portinari was pursuing. Upon reaching the pay phone, she inserted a quarter and dialed Augusta's number.  
  
"Hello?"  
  
"Augusta, this is April," the cat girl almost shouted. "I have the time reverser. Dr. Portinari stole it."  
  
She was greeted with about ten seconds of silence on the line.  
  
"Augusta? Are you still there?"  
  
"Yes," came the woman's voice, which sounded emotionally shaken. "Come home right away. I'll get the crystal ready."  
  
April looked somberly at the other kids while hanging up the phone. "You wanted to know what Augusta's plan is," she said. "You're about to find out."  
  
TBC 


	23. Plan Z

Saturday afternoon, at about 2 p.m.  
  
April led George, Alan, and Fern to a secluded apple orchard not far from Lakewood Elementary. The weather was sunny and pleasant, and they could hear the song of a quail in the distance. In front of the rows of trees, Augusta was pacing back and forth, wearing a blue skirt and tennis shoes, holding a black plastic case under her arm.  
  
"Hello, April," she greeted the cat girl. "Why did you bring these kids?"  
  
"They asked to come," was April's reply. "They wanted to know about your plan."  
  
Augusta smiled and nodded. "I see."  
  
"What's in that black box?" Fern inquired, pointing.  
  
"All in good time," said Augusta, walking closer to the children. "Tell me, do you like basketball?"  
  
"Sure do," responded Alan.  
  
"I'm too short," said George sadly.  
  
"You won't believe this," Augusta related, "but I once had a chance at a college basketball scholarship, but I turned it down."  
  
"I don't believe it," said Fern.  
  
Augusta regaled the kids with basketball stories for about ten minutes, at which time they saw Dr. Portinari approaching through the uncut grass and weeds. The psychiatrist stood at one side of George, held out his hand with its palm raised, and demanded, "Augusta, give me the time device."  
  
The rabbit woman flashed a defiant look at Portinari as April stepped over to her side. Then Augusta, taking the black case in one hand, waved her other arm in front of Alan, Fern, George, and Portinari. All at once, they felt an odd tingling in their legs that quickly passed.  
  
George was the first to notice something amiss. "I...I can't move my legs," he told the others.  
  
Upon hearing this, Fern, Alan, and Portinari attempted to take a step closer to Augusta and April, but were unable to will themselves to walk.  
  
April reached into her pocket and drew out the time reverser, while Augusta flipped open the black case to reveal a large white crystal about the size of a loaf of bread.  
  
"That's it," said George in astonishment. "That's the Los Cactos crystal."  
  
Portinari spoke in a pleading tone. "Please, Augusta. You must turn the time device over to me."  
  
"Why?" Augusta gently rubbed the surface of the crystal with her fingers.  
  
"I can't let you use it again," the doctor said earnestly. "Don't ask why. Just trust me. I love you, and I would never hurt you."  
  
"And I love you, Rick," said Augusta with affection. "But I would love you more if you didn't steal from me."  
  
"Would someone please tell us what's going on?" Fern interjected as she struggled vainly to move her feet.  
  
Portinari became crestfallen. "I admit, I stole it from your apartment. But I had to. There are forces at work you don't understand. You must give it back to me."  
  
Rather than answer, Augusta cautiously lifted the crystal from its case, which she passed to April. With one hand she raised the misty object high into the air, and with the other she plucked the time reverser from April's hand.  
  
"You have nothing to fear," April told the others. "Once Augusta activates the time reverser, our timeline will cease to exist. None of what is about to happen will have happened."  
  
"That sounds bad," Fern muttered to Alan.  
  
"We have to stop her somehow," Alan replied. "I have some coins in my pocket I can throw at her."  
  
Then the Los Cactos crystal started to glow--a spectacular, enchanting light.  
  
"Augusta, what are you doing?" exclaimed Portinari.  
  
The rabbit woman gazed into the shining crystal as if she were possessed. The light emanating from it grew and spread, splitting into tendrils which shot through the sky and over the horizon in almost no time.  
  
Alan started to tremble. He had seen a similar display of pyrotechnics before, when Dolly had absorbed the evil out of Elwood City with the Cleansing Stone...  
  
In the former Crosswire mansion, Mavis was visiting with Mickie and discussing their situation with the Spongebrain strip.  
  
"When I read your comic, it seemed really familiar," Mavis told Mickie in the palacial living room. "Then I remembered...I had seen the exact same joke in last week's episode of Family Dude."  
  
"So what?" said Mickie petulantly. "Writers steal jokes from other writers all the time. And nobody watches Family Dude. That's why they cancelled it."  
  
"It won't work, Mickie," Mavis retorted. "People will catch on, and they'll stop reading your comics, and ask the newspaper to stop printing them. You won't succeed unless you come up with original ideas. Or is that the only thing I can do that you can't?"  
  
As Mickie pondered what Mavis had told her, a wave of light sped through the mansion, almost imperceptible to them. What they experienced next was not a feeling, but rather a total lack of feeling--as if their capacity for love and compassion had been utterly stripped away, leaving only disgust and hatred.  
  
Negative, hideous thoughts filled their minds--thoughts about hurting and killing. Unable to control themselves, they shrieked, flew at each other, and flailed with their fists.  
  
The web of light from the Los Cactos crystal covered the entire sky for about ten seconds, then started to fade and withdraw. After another second or two the tendrils had vanished, and the crystal burst forth with an intense light that Fern, George, Alan, and Portinari found to be much more beautiful than any light they had ever before seen. If not for their certainty that something sinister had just happened, they might have contented themselves with gazing into the light all day.  
  
"Wait a minute, April," Alan spoke up. "You said Augusta wouldn't suck the evil out of the world."  
  
April smiled innocently. "She didn't."  
  
With a look of immense satisfaction, Augusta lowered the crystal and raised her hand that held the time reverser. She placed her thumb over the activation switch and beamed at Portinari.  
  
The psychiatrist had by now reached the point of desperation. "I love you, Augusta," he said with urgent emotion. "I need you. By all that is holy, do not push that button!"  
  
Augusta only smiled wider. "I'll still love you, Rick," she said sweetly. "I'll still love you after I've become a god."  
  
Then she tried to squeeze with her thumb and activate the time reverser...  
  
...but her fingers would not move.  
  
April was alarmed by the rabbit woman's sudden look of consternation. "Push the button," she urged. "Do it now."  
  
"I...can't..." mumbled the increasingly perturbed Augusta as she fought against the invisible power that held her fingers in place.  
  
Then, to everyone's surprise, Portinari stepped forward effortlessly and wrapped his hand around Augusta's fist. Ripping the time reverser away from her with his other hand, he said flatly, "Resistance is useless."  
  
And in a puff of light, they both vanished.  
  
TBC 


	24. The Time Council

April, George, Fern, and Alan were left speechless and disoriented by the sudden disappearance of Augusta and Portinari. They looked in all directions, hoping to find the couple nearby. They cared little that the spell binding their legs had dissipated.  
  
"Augusta! Where are you?" April cried out in agonized horror.  
  
The other three kids gathered around the cat girl, who seemed on the verge of tears. "What happened to them?" George asked her. "Did they go back in time?"  
  
"No," said April, sobbing like a child. "He took the time reverser. He didn't push the button. Augusta's plan failed, and now..."  
  
"Did I hear her say something about becoming a god?" asked Fern.  
  
Then they were all distracted by an unpleasant, frightening sound. A gunshot. Another one followed two seconds later, a bit closer and louder than the first.  
  
A sudden scream caused them to turn their heads. In the street a block away, two men were throwing fierce punches at each other.  
  
Alan felt his stomach twist when he realized the true nature of Augusta's failure.  
  
"Omigosh...omigosh..." he muttered anxiously. His fear turned into indignation, and he glared at the weeping April. "Augusta didn't suck the evil out of the world. She sucked the good out of it!"  
  
April nodded weakly and wiped the tears from her cheeks. "Not the whole world," she said sorrowfully. "Just this continent. And maybe a little bit of South America and Asia."  
  
Alan turned to Fern and George, gasping for words, his heart filled with anger and hopelessness. Another gunshot echoed through the neighborhood, and furious shrieks were heard from every direction.  
  
"So that was her plan," he said, fighting to remain calm. "Suck all the good from the people of this continent into the crystal, go back and time and stop herself from doing it, and then absorb the good from the crystal into herself, to become an all-powerful, benevolent deity. Just like what Dolly wanted to do, only with good instead of evil."  
  
"Like you said, Alan," replied George in amazement. "Omigosh."  
  
Before the four kids could reflect further on their situation, a dog man with a crazed expression came running at them through the trees, screaming and waving a large kitchen knife.  
  
"Look out!" yelled George. At the sight of the approaching maniac, Alan and Fern threw their arms around each other and screamed in terror.  
  
"Kill...kill..." ranted the madman as he raised his knife above the petrified pair. It seemed to them as if the man's pupils had shrunk to pinpoints.  
  
As he was about to strike, April sprang into action, plunging her fist into his abdomen. As he doubled up in pain, she followed up with a volley of karate punches to his face, sending him sprawling into the grass, his knife spinning away. He struggled to push himself up, then fell and became silent.  
  
"That was pretty good, April," George commended the girl.  
  
"We're not safe yet," was April's reply. "Everybody on the continent is like him now, except for us. I hate to say it, but if we want to survive, the only way is to hide somewhere until they kill each other off."  
  
"Millions of people," Fern growled at her. "How could you do this?"  
  
April shrugged. "It was going perfectly until Augusta and Rick disappeared."  
  
"Where do you suppose they went?" Alan mused.  
  
----  
  
She was in what appeared to be a small room, about the size of a classroom. The walls were bare and off-white in color, and looked metallic instead of painted. The temperature was slightly colder, and there was no sunlight. Rick Portinari still had his fingers around her wrist, and was staring at her emotionlessly.  
  
He grabbed Augusta by the shoulders and swiveled her around. Before her was a sight so incredible, so shocking, that she nearly fainted. The Los Cactos crystal dropped from her raised hand, plummeted to the floor, and cracked in half. The beatific light contained within started to fade.  
  
About a dozen beings were seated in ascending rows of chairs. Each one was about eight feet tall, with scaly green skin, an overhanging forehead, a nose like a tentacle, beady red eyes, a slim torso, and four arms with eight slender fingers on each hand. It was hard to tell, but they seemed to be focusing their gaze on Augusta and Portinari.  
  
The being at the front of the group opened its cavernous mouth. "Report," it said with a high-pitched, hissing voice.  
  
Portinari pulled his hands away from Augusta and stood, soldier-like, in front of the assembled creatures. "I have brought in the offender," he announced. "Her Earth name is Augusta Winslow. I confiscated the time device from her" --he held up the time reverser--"but she succeeded in taking it back. I was, however, able to stop her from using it again." The strange beings turned their heads about and muttered to each other in lizardlike voices.  
  
Augusta stepped over the broken crystal and confronted the creatures. "Who are you?" she demanded. "What is this place? What do you want with me?"  
  
The foremost creature responded without a pause. "We are the members of the Time Council. You are in the council chamber, on a planet which we call Kron. You have been arraigned for operating an illegal time device."  
  
Horror gripped Augusta's mind. "You...you're aliens," she stammered. "Aliens from space. You must send me back to Earth at once."  
  
"The Time Council will decide whether you are allowed to return to your planet," the chief alien continued.  
  
"You don't understand!" cried Augusta frantically. "Unless I use the time reverser to warn my past self, millions of people on my planet will die!"  
  
"We are aware of the state of affairs on Earth," said the alien in an unfeeling tone. "Time Enforcer Grobblitz, I believe the human will feel more at ease if you explain things to her."  
  
Portinari turned to Augusta and raised a hand to lift up her chin, but she stepped back in horror. "Rick...you're...you're one of them..."  
  
The psychiatrist nodded. "My real name is Grobblitz, as you now know. My race, the Kron, are members of an interplanetary alliance that has existed for millions of Earth years. The many races have various responsibilities as Alliance members, and the Kron are masters of time travel. As a Time Enforcer, my job is to travel from planet to planet, investigating experiments in time travel and preventing those that may cause serious damage to the space-time continuum. I analyzed your time reverser, and determined that each time it is used, it has a one in ten million chance of destroying a large section of space-time."  
  
"One in ten million?" Augusta's tone became one of outrage. "That's ridiculous! And even if the odds were that high, it hardly warrants sending an alien enforcer to interfere with my plans."  
  
"It may seem that way to you," said Portinari calmly, "but consider that there are more than five million inhabited planets within the bounds of the Alliance, and a great many of those planets have scientists who conduct time travel experiments. If even one of those scientists makes an error, entire star systems could be wiped out."  
  
"I don't have time for this, Rick," Augusta protested. "I need to get back to Earth and reverse what I just did."  
  
"The Council will decide whether you are allowed to return," Portinari droned.  
  
Increasingly fearful, Augusta lovingly placed her hands over the man's shoulders. "Please, Rick," she cooed. "I know you love me. Take me back to Earth." Then she kissed him, but he felt almost like a block of ice to her lips and hands.  
  
"You should have listened to me," he said dispassionately. "I hoped I could resolve the situation without revealing my alien identity to you, but you made that impossible. I do love you, Augusta...but we can never be together again. I'm sorry."  
  
Tears streamed down the rabbit woman's cheeks. "All those people will die," she said bitterly, "and it will be your fault."  
  
"The loss of life is tragic indeed," Portinari replied, "but my duties in regard to your planet have been fulfilled. If you wish for further assistance from the Alliance, you must request it through other channels--once the Council has decided your fate."  
  
Augusta sobbed in anguish as she imagined the awesome death and destruction that were surely taking place on Earth as a result of her actions. Once again, her plan to bring about a perfect world had failed terribly due to unforeseen complications.  
  
But wait...she still had the power of the Wicasta...would it work on aliens?  
  
TBC 


	25. Mixed Doubles

It might work--she could discern good and evil in these creatures, just as she could in humans.  
  
Raising her arms, she waved one hand at Portinari, and the other at the members of the Time Council. "You must do right," she commanded. "You cannot do wrong. You will give me the time reverser and return me to Earth." Everything seemed right; the good within the alien souls was dominating the evil.  
  
Yet their expressions, if they could be called such, did not change. "That would be a violation of the laws of the Alliance," said Portinari flatly.  
  
"Saving lives is not against the law!" shrieked Augusta in despair. "What's the matter with you aliens?"  
  
The Time Enforcer seemed slightly moved by her display of anger and sorrow. "If it makes you feel better," he offered, "we can establish a communications link between the council chamber and Earth, so you can give comfort to your young friends in their last moments."  
  
Augusta rubbed the tears from her eyes and wondered how the privilege of watching April, George, Fern, and Alan die violently would console her.  
  
Finally she said, "Go ahead. It's better than nothing."  
  
The chief alien council member raised a tentacle, and one of the metallic walls instantaneously transformed into a sort of video screen. The scene was of an Elwood City street in chaos; about a dozen brutal fights were taking place, and an occasional gunshot was audible. In the middle of it all, Alan, Fern, and George were looking around in terror, while two men and two women with crazed expressions and shrunken pupils were being smacked around by an invisible karate fighter.  
  
The three kids were shocked by the sudden appearance of a floating screen, which showed them an alien council in front of which Augusta and Portinari stood. "It's them!" Alan cried out.  
  
"Come back!" Fern pleaded. "Come back or we're all dead!" A bleeding cut was visible on her right temple.  
  
"I can't," said Augusta, stepping closer to the Kron end of the screen. "The aliens won't let me."  
  
"Aliens!" gloated George. "I knew it all along!" Behind him, April briefly reappeared after felling her attackers, only to be confronted by five more bloodthirsty residents.  
  
"They won't let me use the time reverser," Augusta explained to them. "They say it has a one in ten million chance of destroying the space-time continuum."  
  
"We have a one in one chance of being destroyed if you don't use it!" Alan retorted.  
  
"Did you try using your powers to make them good?" Fern asked her.  
  
"Yes," answered Augusta. "That only made them more determined to uphold their laws."  
  
"Then try using your powers to make them evil," Fern suggested.  
  
"That's crazy! They'll start killing each other!"  
  
"Not if they're like the Glinkons," George chimed in.  
  
"The what?" Augusta looked at him quizzically through the video screen.  
  
"Aliens on Star Trek," George explained. "They're genetically incapable of violence. They can't hurt others, even to save their own lives."  
  
There was a cry of pain, and April became visible as she toppled to the asphalt. The invisibility stone dropped from her hand, rolled into the gutter, and disappeared through a grating.  
  
"April!" cried Alan, bending down to examine the deep gash in the unconscious girl's chest.  
  
As Augusta watched helplessly, four townspeople with murder in their eyes surrounded Alan, Fern, and George. The three children had no more defenses.  
  
"Turn it off!" she exclaimed in horror.  
  
The video transmission on the wall of the alien chamber faded and vanished.  
  
April was dead. It was too much to endure. Augusta broke down and wept.  
  
Now more sympathetic, Portinari embraced her and allowed her tears to flow down his shirt. "We can do nothing," he said quietly. "We must do nothing. It is the law. I wish you could understand."  
  
She had never believed she could suffer so much. Millions would die, and she was the cause, and these alien meddlers would not allow her to become the solution. Her life, her dreams, everything she had experienced...it was all meaningless.  
  
Then, from the depths, she heard an echo of what George had told her.  
  
She pushed Portinari away, wiped the tears from her cheeks, and straightened her unruly hair. "Is it true?" she asked the Time Enforcer. "Is your race incapable of violence?"  
  
"Yes," came his reply. "We eliminated aggressive tendencies from our species forty million years ago."  
  
"I see," said Augusta, her sorrow turning into confidence. "So if one of you were to give in to your baser nature, you wouldn't act in a violent way, just a selfish, short-sighted way."  
  
"True."  
  
She now knew what she needed to do.  
  
Waving her hands at Portinari and the Time Council, she intoned, "You are now evil. You will act selfishly, with no regard for the law."  
  
Portinari's stoic demeanor gave way to a wicked sneer. Tightening his grip on the time reverser with one hand, he used his other to take Augusta by the shoulder and draw her to his chest.  
  
"To blazes with the law," he exclaimed in a spirited tone. "I'm going back to Earth with the woman I love!"  
  
The aliens in the Council looked at each other and murmured.  
  
"Sure, whatever," said one of them.  
  
"It's none of our business," said another.  
  
And in a flash, Augusta and Portinari were on their way back.  
  
----  
  
"You have nothing to fear," said April. "Once Augusta activates the time reverser, our timeline will cease to exist. None of what is about to happen will have happened."  
  
"That sounds bad," Fern muttered to Alan.  
  
"We have to stop her somehow," Alan replied. "I have some coins in my pocket I can throw at her."  
  
Then the Los Cactos crystal started to glow...  
  
"Stop!" came a woman's voice.  
  
Relieved at the sound, Augusta lowered the crystal. April returned the case to her, and she placed the object inside and closed it.  
  
Alan, Fern, and George discovered that they could move their legs. To their astonishment, a man and woman who exactly resembled Portinari and Augusta were strolling through the grass and weeds in their direction. In one hand the Portinari double held a second time reverser.  
  
Augusta examined her own double and Portinari's with concern. "You brought Rick with you," she observed. "And you don't have the crystal. Something's gone wrong."  
  
"You said it, sister," replied the Augusta double.  
  
Before anyone had a chance to comment on the oddness of the situation, a large video screen appeared in the air. The image was of the Time Council in its chamber.  
  
"Time Enforcer Grobblitz," proclaimed the foremost alien, "you have openly violated the laws of the Alliance by using a forbidden time device. The punishment is eternal exile from Kron, and the destruction of your device."  
  
The Portinari double squeezed the time reverser in his hand until it burst into useless chunks. "Done, and done."  
  
Augusta looked down at the original time reverser she held, then turned to Portinari. "Rick, what's a Time Enforcer?"  
  
"You're looking at one," the psychiatrist replied. "No, you're looking at two."  
  
Augusta lowered her head thoughtfully. "From the sound of it, I'm not going to get away with this." She handed the time reverser to Portinari, who crushed and dropped it as April watched in dismay.  
  
"Wow," George marveled. "Dr. Portinari really is an alien."  
  
"But I'm a friendly alien," said the two Portinaris in unison.  
  
April confronted Augusta angrily. "You let him destroy the time reverser," she protested. "Our plans are ruined."  
  
Augusta looked over at her double. "Would you like to field this one, Augusta?" she asked.  
  
"Certainly, Augusta," answered the double. "You see, April, Rick is a member of an alien race that polices time travel experiments. He stopped me from using the time reverser, and transported me to his planet. I had to make his evil side take over to get him to bring me back, and now he's been kicked out of his planet."  
  
April turned to the Augusta double and pondered for a moment. "All right," she said, "we'll come up with another plan. One that doesn't involve time travel."  
  
"I'm afraid not," was the double's response.  
  
April gaped in disbelief.  
  
"I've made contact with an alien race," the Augusta double went on. "I've learned that there are millions of inhabited worlds, and many of them are much older and more civilized than ours. Before long Earth will join the Alliance, and pattern its society after the more advanced races. Creating a perfect world is no longer a job for witches, April."  
  
The cat girl's face fell. "So...that's it," she muttered. "You're giving up."  
  
"I wouldn't call it giving up," the double replied. "We all contribute to a perfect world in our own little way, you know."  
  
Visibly disgusted, April turned back to the original Augusta and snatched the case containing the crystal from her hands. After gazing dejectedly at the woman's face for a few seconds, she said, "Goodbye, Augusta."  
  
Alan, Fern, and George stepped closer, thinking they were witnessing a bitter farewell.  
  
"Where are you going?" asked Augusta.  
  
"There are things I need to do," April replied sadly. "And the last thing on my list is to return the crystal to Los Cactos...and turn myself in to the authorities."  
  
Everyone else present--Fern, Alan, George, the Augustas, the Portinaris--was filled with sorrow at the prospect of April departing forever, and possibly spending time in prison.  
  
April, her eyes moist, stood in front of Alan, George, and Fern. "It's been fun, guys," she told them. "I'm glad I was able to come back for a little while. I hope you find a new saxophonist for the quartet."  
  
"Will we see you again?" Fern wanted to know.  
  
"It's hard to say," was the best response April could provide.  
  
After she had exchanged hugs with her three young friends, April Murphy, still carrying the crystal case, wandered away from the orchard and down the sidewalk, vanishing behind a house.  
  
The two Augustas faced each other, as well as the two Portinaris. "What do we do now?" wondered the original Augusta. "There's two of each of us."  
  
"I can never go back to Kron after what I did," said the Portinari double. "I will remain on Earth with the woman I love." He laid an arm around the shoulders of the Augusta double.  
  
The original Portinari turned to the original Augusta. "I've committed no crimes, so I can return to Kron if I want. Would you like to visit? It's a beautiful planet."  
  
"I'd love to," answered the original Augusta.  
  
Fern, George, and Alan grinned as they watched the two Augusta-Portinari couples kiss fondly.  
  
----  
  
Monday started out like any other school day. Only Alan, Fern, and George knew that their quick thinking under pressure had saved a large portion of the world from chaos and destruction.  
  
Mavis and Mickie were once again talking about their conflict over the Spongebrain cartoons. "I think you're right after all," Mickie acknowledged. If I use stale ideas, people will realize it sooner or later. If I can't fool you, who can I fool?"  
  
"So you'll withdraw your copyright application?" said Mavis hopefully.  
  
"No way," replied Mickie. "I'll just hire you on as a writer."  
  
As the two girls exchanged barbs, they walked past a bench where Muffy sat studying furiously, trying to prepare for the imminent equivalency test.  
  
In another part of the school, Francine was wishing Van the best for his upcoming operation. "I've had three surgeries like this one before," the duck boy assured her. "I don't think anything will go wrong."  
  
"I'll be praying for you, just in case," said Francine. Glancing around, she added, "Now where did I leave my backpack? Oh, right. The art room."  
  
Taking leave of Van, she hurried toward the art classroom, hoping to retrieve her pack in time for the beginning of the next period.  
  
The door had been left open, and the room was semi-dark. As Francine squeezed through the easels toward the table where she had left her pack, she heard a sound like heavy breathing from one corner.  
  
Curious, she turned...and saw Arthur and Beat on their knees, kissing.  
  
"Arthur! NO!"  
  
----  
  
On another street, in another town, in another state, April Murphy stepped out of a taxi and onto the sidewalk. Her bandages had been removed, and the scars on her right arm and left temple were quite visible. She strapped onto her back a bag that carried all of her worldly possessions.  
  
She had seen the little pastel-green house before--indeed, she had lived in it before.  
  
She rang the doorbell, and shortly was greeted by Daisy Armstrong. Daisy's nine-year-old daughter Sue Ellen stood behind her, and they both gasped at the sight of the amazingly familiar-looking visitor.  
  
"Can I come in?" asked April. "I need to talk to you about something very important."  
  
A block away, another pair of eyes watched through binoculars while Mrs. Armstrong allowed April to enter and closed the door. The eyes belonged to an aardvark man with a moustache and a dark blue suit and tie, who sat in the driver's seat of a yellow Camaro.  
  
The man sneered. "Good girl," he muttered with pleasure. "You led me right to them."  
  
THE END 


End file.
